1. The Future of Technology:
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.
Mechanized mining: Historically, the leading
threats to coal miner safety and health were
roof falls, methane and coal dust explosions, and
coal miners’ pneumoconiosis (black lung). Early
mining was dangerous, physically demanding
work. The industry used wooden supports,
timbers, and posts to prevent the roof from
falling or relied on the roof to be self-supporting,
where the digging and loading of coal was done
manually. The lack of mechanization and the
use of wooden supports was labor intensive
and ineffective, limiting productivity and the
generation of methane and coal dust. A new
technology, roof bolts, emerged in the early
1950’s. The roof bolts were long bolts that
were placed in the roof, typically on four-foot
centers, to either support the lower portion
of the roof strata or to cause roof strata to
form a laminated beam. Roof bolts primarily
prevented large roof falls, but smaller rocks
still fell, and even a relatively small rock could
cause a fatality. The use of roof bolts along with
mechanized coal loading and cutting enabled
productivity to grow and as productivity
grew, so did the production of methane and
coal dust. This increase of mechanization led
to the longwall system, which provided full
roof support using massive steel/hydraulic
supports (see Figure 1). In longwall mines,
coal production was so fast that gas liberation
limited production. This problem was addressed
by actively draining the methane from the seam
before and during mining, some of which is sold
to natural gas companies. Dust generation also
increased and required advanced dust control
technology. Longwall technology addressed the
roof fall problem and increased productivity but
required new methods to mitigate the safety
and health issues that it introduced.
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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.
The Team Mission: (1) to anticipate the
potential occupational risks of new workplace
processes, equipment, materials, and work
practices, (2) to assess the benefits of new
technologies that can improve occupational
safety and health, and (3) to identify the needed
industrial changes that have inputs, processes,
and products that would be inherently safer
for workers without compromising the
environment.
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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.
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