Changes in technologies have outpaced our knowledge about their implications as potential risks or benefits for occupational safety and health. Traditionally, this knowledge has been created after a technology is deployed resulting in a research gap between retrospective or reactionary approaches and prospective or anticipatory investments. This report follows a public health model approach. The following chapters apply the public health process of identifying, evaluating, and controlling problems. However, the result of this effort is different, for it attempts to address public health problems before they are manifested, by identifying and prioritizing technologies and their applications as they emerge, evaluating them through knowledge driven teamwork, and providing inherently safer design principles for more benign technological applications.

The Pace of Innovation

The impact of wireless communication, biotechnology, and nanotechnology will continue to change our lives at home and at work. Round the- clock engineering, just-in-time delivery, and advanced tracking systems have taken business to a new level. Faster and more functional software tools for engineering and management as well as new manufacturing hardware are creating a fast response workforce. This new breed of workers must cope with the speed of information technology by analyzing and making rapid decisions throughout the day [Kessler et al. 2003].

While revolutionizing the nature of work, these technological innovations are also creating challenges and opportunities for occupational safety and health. How will new technologies be identified? How can researchers anticipate, assess, and address the potential impacts from new technologies on occupational safety and health? How can developers incorporate safety and health concerns at the earliest design or continuous improvement stages? Such questions seek to frame a national discussion about the occupational safety and health impact of emerging technologies.

What Are Emerging Technologies

Emerging technologies are defined as science based innovations that have the potential to create a new industry or transform an existing one [Day and Schoemaker 2000]. Emerging technologies exist where the knowledge base is expanding, the application to existing markets is undergoing innovation, or new markets are being tapped or created.

This rapid technological development challenges our scientific understanding of its potential risks and benefits to worker safety and health. Risk refers to possible harm to human health that may occur both in its probability and in its potential severity, while benefit refers to something of positive value to health or welfare [Dunn and Chadwick 2002]. The need to anticipate risks is well recognized [DiNardi 2003; Toffel and Birkner 2002], and past examples illustrate the potential negative consequences of emerging technologies. These examples include asbestos insulation, off-road vehicles without rollover protection, airtight buildings, and lead in gasoline. Many workplace hazards, however, have been rendered less harmful through emerging technologies, such as the automation of hazardous jobs, scissor lifts to replace scaffolds, and the use of plastic drain pipes in place of those made from lead joined cast iron.

Understanding Innovation Processes

Hundreds of articles and books have been published over the past four decades regarding the innovation process and its rate of diffusion [Rogers 1995]. The rate of diffusion has been narrowed to a few factors, and communities have been defined by the sequence in which they accept new technologies at different rates. The early steps in this sequence—innovators and early adopters—have been used for business strategies related to emerging technology marketing and deployment [Moore 1999]. The dynamics of deploying these emerging technologies beyond these early steps has led to strategies for mainstream acceptance in the marketplace [Moore 1995]. Understanding this process is important to linking the emerging technology field with the occupational safety and health field.

Anticipating The Future of Emerging Technologies

Past examples of emerging technologies may also forecast areas of future technological growth and their impact on occupational safety and health. Emerging technologies and their applications impact many market and industrial sectors:

Communications

Perhaps no other technological development has impacted global society as quickly or profoundly as communication technology. Within one century, communication technology has grown from the invention of the telephone to a system of wireless radio and satellite linked cable communication. This development has increased the number of sedentary workers that must rapidly analyze and respond to electronic information. Mental rather than physical workloads are now a growing concern for workers [Kessler et al. 2003].

Energy Technology

Governments and industries have made major advances in developing affordable and environmentally responsible energy strategies. Highly efficient combined cycle power plants produce electricity from natural gas. Wind turbines create electricity without fossil fuels. Fuel efficient gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles are now commercially available, and research continues on the development of hydrogen fuel cells that can power vehicles without gasoline or diesel fuels. Despite the promise of these technologies, each involves exposing workers to new safety and health hazards such as servicing the large batteries in hybrid cars and the need to work at great heights to service wind turbines.

Transportation

Technologies to transport people, goods, and services are vital for local and national economies. The internal combustion engine currently dominates transportation technology, allowing these economic needs to be achieved while providing the benefit of personal mobility. Yet the internal combustion engine significantly contributes to air pollution. Unleaded gasoline, reformulated gasoline, (e.g., low sulfur diesel fuel), and the use of catalytic converters have improved air quality, but concerns over global warming, resource conservation, and the health consequences of fossil fuel combustion are stimulating a search for alternative technologies. The development of a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is intended to be a long-term solution to meet global energy and environmental requirements, but problems with the production, distribution, storage, and use of hydrogen must be resolved. Since hydrogen can burn and explode, the development of hydrogen-powered vehicles will have consequences for workers who build, operate, and service them.

Food Production

The global population is expected to increase from six to nine billion people by the year 2050 [U.S. Census Bureau 2003]. Food production and processing must change to feed this growing population. Genetically modified plants, grains, and animals already exist, but the future may see even more manufactured foods. Molecular farming technology may ease global warming by eliminating the need for fermenters, but genetically modified plants may pose potential safety problems. Plants designed for their tolerance to selective and novel herbicides may result in applicator exposure to potentially harmful pesticides. Conversely, opportunities may result from genetically modified plants that are resistant to infestation and decrease the need for certain toxic insecticides.

Housing

New synthetic housing materials and novel production methods may be potentially hazardous to construction workers who have contact with substances of unknown toxicity. New technologies are needed to reduce injuries in residential construction such as falls from roofs. Finally, it is important to understand how new construction materials behave under high stress conditions. For example, emergency workers may need to change their procedures if new materials do not maintain integrity under the thermal stress and moisture levels associated with fires and fire suppression.

Medicine

The advent of molecular biology and the growth of biotechnology have revolutionized medicine and the life sciences. Biotechnology has introduced pharmaceutical uses for new protein biomolecules, while molecular biology has led to the discovery and development of new medicines and clinical diagnostic procedures. Over the last decade pharmaceutical research has been transformed into a highly industrialized process that can now achieve molecular level detail, and draws from genomics, combinatorial chemistry, and advances in microfluidics. Moreover, information technology has enabled researchers to better understand the causes, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. New drugs, however, can be toxic and may pose hazards to healthcare workers and veterinarians through prolonged exposures or unexpected toxic interactions.

Materials

The plastics revolution of the mid-20th century led to less expensive, lighter, and sturdier products such as beverage containers, clothing, automobile parts, and portable telephones. Nanotechnology is now emerging as a new means to produce strong, lightweight materials. Nanotechnology may make it possible to build items by manipulating individual atoms.

Nanotechnology presents beneficial opportunities for worker safety and health, like a self-cleaning window coating that reduces the need for workers to be suspended from a tall building to wash windows. These very small nanoparticles, however, may have unexpected properties and may present health hazards to humans. For example, the inert metal gold becomes chemically reactive at the nano-level [Haruta 2001]

Figure 1. Improved productivity is realized with improvements in safety and health in longwall mining.

Emerging Technologies and the National Occupational Research Agenda

The National Occupational Research Agenda (NORA) arose from the recognition that occupational safety and health research in both the public and private sectors would benefit from targeting limited resources. The creators of the Agenda also recognized the need to address changes in the U.S. workplace, and NORA addresses the broadly recognized need to focus research in the areas with the highest likelihood of reducing the still significant toll of workplace injury and illness. Emerging technologies bring change to the workplace, yet through design, these technologies can reduce existing hazards.

NORA recognizes the importance of emerging technologies for occupational safety and health. A broad concurrence among stakeholders led to including emerging technologies as a NORA research priority. As a result, NIOSH established an Emerging Technologies Team to develop a research agenda that would address knowledge gaps and research needs related to emerging technologies and reduction of occupational safety and health risks. Research and development needs identified in the agenda include (1) improved surveillance mechanisms to better track the emergence of technology, (2) accelerated research on the safety and health implications of emerging technology, (3) increased research focus on promoting safety and health in emerging technology fields, and (4) steps to formalize and nurture emerging technology as a field in occupational safety and health.

Overview

Many challenges exist in predicting the risks and benefits of emerging technologies to occupational safety and health.

Researchers need mechanisms to anticipate both positive and negative health consequences, laboratory and statistical models to predict hazards, and surveillance systems that rapidly identify worker morbidity and mortality resulting from new materials, tools, or processes. Chapters 2 through 5 of this report outline recommendations for meeting these needs.

The second chapter of this report addresses research needed to identify emerging technologies. It promotes classifying new technologies according to the risks or benefits they may pose to occupational safety and health. This classification is a systematic approach to establish priorities for surveillance and analysis.

The third chapter recommends research toward a prospective analysis framework that anticipates the potential risks and benefits associated with emerging technologies. This framework is a modified risk assessment approach that is based on accrued knowledge and targeted research findings and includes the analysis of benefits. This research methodology aims to help prevent exposure to hazards from emerging technologies in the workplace.

Chapter 4 describes research needed to yield a potentially safer design approach for new and emerging technologies to eliminate occupational hazards or reduce work-related risks and identify more benign alternatives to replace riskier technologies.

This method establishes the need for principles that consider inputs, products, and processes that are inherently safer for the work environment, such as using benign or less harmful materials.

Finally, Chapter 5 integrates the identification, analysis, and design methods so as to eliminate or reduce the risks as well as maximize the benefits of new technologies. This chapter also makes recommendations for additional collaboration in research.