Developing an Integrated Research Model

The design process for emerging technologies must consider an array of safety and health areas before and after deployment. An integrated rather than a specific approach to conducting occupational and environmental health research is needed. This approach would integrate innovative engineering controls with prospective analysis to protect researchers and workers during the research and development phase. In manufacturing, the approach would integrate an intrinsic toxicity-based occupational exposure assessment of the raw materials, the intermediate byproducts, and emissions with life cycle assessment and analysis of the environmental impacts. The approach also would address potential exposure routes to other workers and to the community, and it would include an analysis of the economic and health benefits to people and society from the use of the new technology. In addition, the safety and health impact of new potential uses or misuse of the technology after its deployment must be anticipated so that injury or illness prevention strategies can be implemented.

An iterative risk assessment of new technologies would benefit from partnerships between interested parties. Parties such as government, industry, labor unions, insurance providers, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) could partner in order to share current data, new information, risks, and benefits identified through prospective analysis. Partnerships between government agencies and private sector entities are few, but can be achieved. An example is a research partnership between the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the American Chemistry Council, wherein toxicological research is jointly prioritized and funded. Finding ways to form and sustain partnerships between parties potentially impacted by new technology is needed.

Ensuring public trust in the development of new technologies is a crucial research responsibility.

Numerous examples exist of the harm that occurs when this trust is violated. Public trust in the nuclear power industry dwindled after the Three Mile Island malfunction and Chernobyl explosion. Following the Chernobyl incident in 1986, the biotechnology industry took notice and embraced risk assessment, risk management, and a culture of expertise, which made transparency rather than secrecy a priority [Fleising 2002]. The industry allocated resources to these priorities, emphasized social responsibility, and responded to critical incidents to dispel public uncertainty quickly. The biotechnology industry’s responsiveness has eased a 15-year emergence of its technology in the United States.

Research Opportunities and Responsibilities

Links with Other Priority Areas

An injury and disease prevention approach necessitates the development of specific innovative technologies to reduce or eliminate persistent occupational illnesses and injuries. This approach is consistent with several other NORA priority areas that relate to disease and injury.

Since unintended consequences in safety and health associated with new and emerging technologies may not be anticipated, partnerships for identifying research needs are desirable among researchers in NORA areas concerned with the rapid changes facing the workforce. These areas include Organization of Work, Special Populations, Social and Economic Consequences, and Control Technology and Personal Protective Equipment.

Research should be extended into specific occupational environments such as the construction [Transportation Research Board 2003], agricultural [US Department of Agriculture 2003], and service industries. Examples of possible research topics are:

• The integrity of new materials in building construction (structural and fire safety);
• Safer fertilizers and insecticides for food production or lawn and garden care;
• Mechanical devices and power tools to reduce ergonomic stress to workers;
• Novel protective devices against non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation.

Other NORA priority areas are linked to many recommendations in this paper. The chapter on the identification and surveillance of emerging technologies relates to Surveillance Research Methods, the chapter on prospective analysis relates to the Risk Assessment Methods priority, and the chapter regarding inherently safer design relates to the Control Technology and Personal Protective Equipment priority.

Government Funding

Government-funded research programs can have an impact on emerging technologies and should be a priority. An example of a beneficial technology that, through innovation, became more beneficial is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) support of research in the late 1970s and early 1980s that led to the chemical synthesis of DNA [Sprackland 2002]. This synthesis allowed researchers to bypass the need to produce DNA through direct replication, and as a result, they were able to generate much higher yields of DNA.

By 2002, a project funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and DARPA had shown the promise of reducing time for the sequencing of genetic information of a person’s DNA from 2 to 4 years to 24 hours [University of Houston 2002]. This new technology included the use of a genetically engineered enzyme, DNA polymerase, which sequenced bases in a DNA strand that could be read by a computer. This is an emerging area called bioinformatics in which genomics and computer technology have merged.

Coordinated Effort

A coordinated effort including government, industry, and academia is needed to optimally provide for developing and implementing inherently safer designs for more benign technologies. Government research agencies can assist firms or industries to undertake TOAs in the adoption or development of new technologies. Both industry and government must be technologically literate to ensure that the TOAs are sophisticated and comprehensive. Promotion of integrated research for occupational and environmental health in federal and state governmental agencies is needed to improve criteria development and guidelines for reducing toxic releases, injuries, and diseases through inherently safer and cleaner technologies [Zwetslot and Ashford 2003]. Furthermore, operations of key disciplines and functions such as engineering, occupational safety, industrial hygiene, and environmental practice need to be joined.

Early Reporting of Effects

New information, such as toxicological data on materials used in the manufacture of the technology, would trigger an updated prospective analysis. Because of the complexity of the emerging technology process, there is a gap in the community’s ability to recognize adverse consequences of emerging technologies in their initial stages of use. Techniques are needed to evaluate the emergence of new injuries or diseases that are associated with the product or processes of emerging technologies.

Historically, a Health Hazard Evaluation technique has been used to spot such problems. This technique is an after-the-fact approach to signal unique diseases or hazards and depends on requests to evaluate mystery sicknesses or potential hazards related with a new product. The requests come from employers, employees, or government agencies. Still, this approach lacks a focus on emerging or benign technologies.

Many innovations in biotechnology and nanotechnology are expected to create new opportunities and may even offer new options in the prevention and diagnosis of diseases. Researchers need to examine areas of interest such as biotechnology or to investigate opportunities for using information technology or electronics and communications to monitor and inspect workplace programs.

Precautionary Principle

Utilization of the Precautionary Principle could be a potential approach to emerging technologies analysis. The approach was conceived in Europe and adopted as policy by virtue of the 1992 Treaty on European Union [CEC 2000]. The Precautionary Principle was defined by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, as follows: "[w]here there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, scientific uncertainty shall not be used to postpone cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation" [UNEP 1992]. While other definitions exist, the foregoing is widely accepted. In brief, the overall aim of the Precautionary Principle is to provide an approach to acting in the face of uncertainty [Grandjean 2003]. The Precautionary Principle has to date been associated primarily with preventing harm from environmental hazards, e.g., preventing the introduction into commerce of hazardous substances. However, the Principle could also be applied to the prevention of occupational injuries [Pless 2003] and workplace health problems, if adopted in the future.

Advocates of the Precautionary Principle see it as an alternative to the use of risk assessment by which to predicate risk management actions, often a lengthy, litigious, and costly process [Tickner 2003; Tickner et al. 2003]. It remains a challenge to apply the Precautionary Principle to emerging technologies analysis of U.S. workers’ safety and health issues.

Conclusion

The anticipation of occupational safety and health hazards has been a tenet for safety and hygiene professionals for some time. This report provides an approach for putting this principle into action. It attempts to provide the foundation for identifying, forecasting, and avoiding hazards with technologies as they emerge into widespread use. It also addresses the opportunities for applying emerging technologies to improve occupational safety and health when they replace hazardous existing technologies. This approach can link heavy investment with inherently safer designs to protect the safety and health of workers.

The challenge for identifying emerging technologies that can bring benefits or pose potential risks to occupational safety and health is both simple and difficult. It is simple to find new technologies that are emerging as economically viable, but the difficulty lies in choosing the appropriate subset of these technologies for surveillance and later analysis. The challenge is to define the minimal set of data needed to make this choice.

The identification of emerging technologies that warrant occupational safety and health interest leads to prospective analyses of the potential risks or benefits of these technologies. Occupational safety and health professionals in the United States are familiar with risk assessment, and it can be adapted for use in anticipating hazards as well as benefits. This adaptation involves acting on knowledge as it accrues about the hazards of the technology.

It also involves moving the process from a regulatory to a knowledge-driven perspective in order to expedite changes toward inherently safer options. Conversely, a new technology may be safer than a current technology, which can expand the market for the technology into the occupational safety and health niche. The analysis adds a prospective step to the risk assessment approach by asking "what if" and "what could" to the team assembled for the analysis. The challenge is for multidisciplinary commitment to teamwork in this process.

Firms developing emerging technologies may more readily accept inherently safer design principles since they have yet to invest in the production process or market acceptance of a product. Fundamentally, inherently safer design aims to avoid hazards rather than control them, and this approach is essential in selecting designs that are relatively benign for occupational safety and health. This approach can also assist in identifying technologies that could be deployed as they emerge from other sectors. A challenge is to gain universal acceptance of principles for inherently safer designs so they can be used by developers of new technologies.

The identification, analysis, and avoidance of hazards as well as identifying the opportunities for improving occupational safety and health associated with emerging technologies requires an integrated approach. This integration requires the occupational safety and health professional’s involvement with the technology developers and entrepreneurs through the life cycle of new technologies. Indeed, the whole analysis team must continuously interact in order to transform the emerging technology into an inherently safer technology. The challenge is to bring the various stakeholders together in a continuous interaction so that the emerging technology can provide for the improved safety and health of working people.