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MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 209 original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. we have found that a corporate health and safety regulatory system exists that matches that of the public sector. This shadow government employs a variety of standards. Generally, these include the relatively few standards that are mandated by government, the many more industry consensus standards, and some internal corporate standards developed for new products and facilities or to maintain a higher standard of workplace health and safety. This standard- setting process is replete with many of the conflicting roles and motivations found in the public process, and in some corporations it is based on an extremely sophisticated risk-assessment process. As with the governmental process, it is easier to set standards than to enforce them. But a genuinely committed firm may be able to enforce its own standards more easily than the government can regulate that firm. Underlying the institutionalization of hazard management is a vital change in public attitudes. In the late 1960s three powerful movementsâthose concerned with the environment, consumerism, and, more recently, personal healthâbegan to overlap and coalesce. The strongest of the three, the environmental, is founded on deeply held values and strong, persistent attitudes. Polls have consistently shown that concern with air and water pollution, support for strong government regulation, and sympathy for the environmental movement claim favor with two-thirds of the population despite the full range of liberal-to-conservative political affiliations and fluctuations (Mitchell, 1984). The more recent and somewhat amorphous personal health movement can only reinforce these concerns about hazards. Although techniques and institutions vary, a commitment to the management of technological hazards is deeply entrenched in most industrialized countries. The costs are substantial. Modern industrialized countries commonly devote between 1 and 2 percent of their gross national product (GNP) just to the prevention and reduction of pollution. Our study group calculated that in 1979 the social cost of coping with hazards associated with technology in the United States was equivalent to between 7 and 12 percent of GNP, with about half devoted to hazard management and the remainder incurred as damages to people, material, and the environment (Tuller, in press). These expenditures reflect the stable commitment to environmental values forged over the last two decades and its implementation in major political and economic institutions. Coping with the emergent issues of the next 15 years begins on that base, and the maturation of nonfederal institutions offers new opportunities. THE PERSISTENCE OF SURPRISE One goal of professional risk and hazard assessment is to minimize surprise. Notwithstanding the substantial resources now devoted to the management of technological hazards, one of the distinguishing features of the last 15 years is that surprise persists and, paradoxically, grows.
MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 210 original typesetting files. Page breaks are true to the original; line lengths, word breaks, heading styles, and other typesetting-specific formatting, however, cannot be About this PDF file: This new digital representation of the original work has been recomposed from XML files created from the original paper book, not from the retained, and some typographic errors may have been accidentally inserted. Please use the print version of this publication as the authoritative version for attribution. While the partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant on March 28, 1979, was within the range of uncertainty postulated by some assessors of the risk of nuclear accidents, the public and most scientists were surprised by the event. Other examples of major surprises include acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), the Bhopal disaster, Legionnaires' disease, natural carcinogens, the nuclear winter scenario, suicide truck bombs, toxic shock syndrome, and poisoned Tylenol. Hazardous surprises seem to occur at a frequency of about twice a year worldwide. Paradoxically, success in managing hazards fuels our surprise. The conquest of many common infectious diseases makes the outbreak of new infectious diseases surprising, not only because of the complexity of the pathogens involved but also because of the mix of social behavior and technologies involved in their transmission: conventions, homosexuality, blood distribution networks, superabsorbent tampons, and air conditioning systems. The remarkable record of purity in our food and drugs heightens the impact of a mass poisoner. Our vaunted military strength makes our vulnerability to the truck bomber seem astonishing. But there are also genuine scientific surprises. Forty years after Hiroshima, nuclear winter, a major new consequence of nuclear war, is hypothesized (National Research Council, 1985). Long after the identification of natural carcinogens such as aflatoxins in peanut butter, we are still surprised by their extent and potential toxicity (Ames, 1983). Surprising hazards are an inevitable outgrowth of technological change. One of the positive developments of the past 15 years has been the growing public understanding that all technology is hazardous and that some technologies are substantially more hazardous than others. I believe that the demand for totally safe technologies has diminished. Technological innovation will surely produce new hazards, and many of these will prove quite surprising despite the successful institutionalization of the processes of ensuring early hazard identification and product safety. Identifying potentially hazardous technologies may become more difficult because of a troubling characteristic of the so-called high technologies. Since 1939, three major high technologies have dominated the innovation process: nuclear engineering, solid-state electronics, and biotechnology. A characteristic of the development of these technologies has been the blurring of the roles of the basic scientist, the technologist, and the entrepreneurâa blurring hailed by many as leading to quicker innovation, application, and use. This pattern began with the atomic bomb, when Albert Einstein wrote to President Roosevelt about the military implications of atomic energy and a generation of physicists worked as technologists to make it a reality. It is most evident today in the development of biotechnology, in which leading scientists assume all three roles. What is troubling is that this blurring of
