%0 Journal Article %T Thermal Fluctuations and Validity of the 1-Loop Effective Potential %A Marcelo Gleiser %A Rudnei O. Ramos %J Physics %D 1992 %I arXiv %R 10.1016/0370-2693(93)90365-O %X We examine the validity of the 1-loop approximation to the effective potential at finite temperatures and present a simple test for its reliability. As an application we study the standard electroweak potential, showing that for a Higgs mass above 70 GeV, and afirly independent of the top mass (with $m_{t} > 90 GeV$, the 1-loop approximation is no longer valid for temperatures in the neighborhood of the critical temperature. %U http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/9211219v2