Hazards: Technology and Fairness (1986)

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MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 212 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. by the legacies of old hazards such as asbestos, changing concepts of responsibility, and the potential for future Bhopal-like catastrophes. Finally, our exemplary tradition of voluntary action, public interest initiative, and corporate good citizenship seems inadequate in the face of such overwhelming tasks as the cleanup of thousands of existing hazardous waste sites. A third set of limits relates to moral choice—the perennial conflict between efficiency and equity. Hazards pose special and subtle problems. These include the separation in space and time of those who receive the benefits of technologies from those who experience the risks; the wide differences in hazard susceptibility between individuals, ages, sexes, and ethnic groups; and the uncertainty as to both cause and responsibility when compensating for injuries inflicted by substances such as asbestos or Agent Orange. These limits are hardly absolute; their boundaries still need to be explored. Some believe that the effectiveness of the hazard management system, recently created in this country and still in flux, has yet to be thoroughly tested. Nonetheless, an interesting search for alternatives is already under way. It includes a search for ways to finesse the uncertainty imposed by the limits to our scientific knowledge, to diminish the catastrophic potential of technology, and to choose an agenda of hazards that pose the greatest threat to our society. It seeks alternatives to government regulation and litigation and new ways to link equity and efficiency in compensating victims of hazards. It is a search for technological and behavioral fixes. TECHNOLOGICAL AND BEHAVIORAL FIXES I served my apprenticeship in hazard science 25 years ago at the University of Chicago under the leadership of Gilbert F. White, whose work involved analyzing the failure of the major engineering works that had been used since 1936 to reduce riverine flood hazard in the United States (White et al., 1958). As engineering projects they worked well, but as social engineering efforts they had a perverse effect. While they reduced the frequency and magnitude of flooding, they also encouraged the development of flood-plains. Thus, there were fewer floods but greater damages. A behavioral fix was needed to complement the prevailing technological fix, and we sought to develop one with a broad program of management innovations in the form of scientific information, floodplain regulation, insurance, emergency evacuation, and incentives for floodproofing individual buildings. I started my career, therefore, skeptical of technological fixes and with a bias toward behavioral fixes. Like the engineering projects that reduce the numbers of floods while amplifying potentially catastrophic floodplain development, there are simi 

MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 213 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. lar perverse combinations of factors found in many hazard management situations. For example, students taking driver training courses in high school have somewhat safer driving records than untrained ones. However, because the institution of such courses has been accompanied by a widespread lowering of the age of licensing, the number of young drivers, as well as their overall accident toll, has increased (Robertson, 1983, pp. 92–94). Confidence in single fixes—technological or behavioral—is usually misplaced. The projected diminution in risk or consequences from the single fix is often overestimated, partly because of the energetic advocacy of its proponents. More often, however, the single fix overlooks some process elsewhere in the chain of causation that either increases the releases, exposures, or consequences of the hazard or introduces a new chain of hazards. Thus, even the most successful of recent simple technological fixes, the childproof drug container that has substantially reduced child-related deaths, creates painful frustration for elderly arthritics and annoyance for all of us. On the other hand, well-managed hazards, exemplified by commercial aviation, employ a spectrum of fixes at every stage in the chain of hazard causation. They combine both behavioral and technological fixes—better crew training and better aircraft. In what follows, I suggest some alternative fixes for coping with technological hazards, but with the warning that, although they could be useful, they are not universally applicable. One desirable class of technological fixes—inherently safe processes— depends on immutable laws of nature rather than on the intervention of humans or electromechanical devices (Weinberg, in this volume). Two such systems have been proposed for nuclear reactors, and suggestions for similar processes are available in chemical engineering. Inherently safe waste disposal is also possible where pretreatment, high-temperature incineration, or constant recycling reduce the toxicity of waste by many orders of magnitude. It is clear that efficient hazard reduction poses as great an engineering challenge as efficient product production. I would also offer a second class of technological fixes—the inherently simple fix. I have cited one example, the childproof drug container. Related to it are the post-Tylenol sealed containers. Innovations in chain saw safety following the epidemic of accidents that resulted from greater use of firewood during the recent energy crisis are another example. Inherently simple fixes require a well-understood hazard, some motivation to cope with it, and a bit of old-fashioned ingenuity. Now that government has attempted to regulate almost every hazard, it is clear that there are real limits to regulation. These limits stem from ideological distaste for government regulation and, more pragmatically, from the inherent shortcomings of rule-making processes and compliance efforts. These limits suggest a need for behavioral fixes—changes in human 

MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 214 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. behavior—using the recently created resources of industry and public interest groups in hazard prevention and reduction. Theoretically, the hazard makers should be the best hazard managers. If they can be persuaded to do so, those who design and manufacture products are in the best position to identify potential hazards and to correct or control them. Much of the persuasion has been accomplished already. Controversy over the grim legacies of the past or the safety of existing products has obscured the real progress made in the design of new, less hazardous products. Novel reporting requirements, such as the so-called squeal law provisions of the Toxic Substances Control Act (requiring manufacturers to report any knowledge of substantial risks), attempt to use industry's own considerable scientific resources. Many more voluntary and creative experiments using industry, public interest groups, and the scientific community are needed. Let me illustrate one such possible effort. Recently, the Board on Toxicology and Environmental Health Hazards of the National Research Council completed a shocking study on available toxicity data (National Research Council, 1984). Based on a sample of some 53,500 distinct chemical entities, the board found that minimal toxicity information was available for only one-third of the drugs and pesticides, one-quarter of the cosmetics, and one-fifth of the chemicals in commerce. In contrast to the virtues of the de minimis approach that proposes to ignore very low levels of hazard, our society seems to have adopted a de ignoramus approach that avoids knowing about many hazards. Industry may well quibble with the standards of minimal knowledge that require new chemical compounds to be tested for toxicity by rodent studies that are expensive and time-consuming. But the National Research Council study employed and, for the most part, was limited to publicly available data. Industry conducts an extraordinary amount of proprietary testing of new chemical products, the results of which may be withheld if the corporation does not develop the product further. Corporate executives are reluctant to disclose these data because screening tests are a significant business expense and they do not wish to reveal to competitors their search strategy for new chemicals. Given the cooperation of industry, it should be possible for an independent scientific body, such as the National Research Council, to review these test data confidentially and prepare a composite list of mutagenic chemicals to be issued annually, with the proprietary sources held in confidence. The final form of the procedure is not important, but the principle is. As a society we need to use our collective hazard management resources in ways that avoid the ponderousness of the regulatory system and the competitiveness of the marketplace. 

MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 215 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. Similarly, we need some new behavioral fixes in our procedures for compensating the victims of hazards. Compensation itself is a failure of hazard management, usually inadequate to match the loss, pain, and suffering incurred. Our current system is in crisis and extremely costly. Insurance premiums continue to rise; some malpractice insurance costs are prohibitive; and corporate failures, including those of major liability insurance companies, are likely. As physicians and the producers of vaccines can attest, malpractice and product liability suits threaten both innovation and useful institutions. But worst of all, the system—with all its high costs—provides neither compensation nor fairness to large numbers of victims. A vigorous national search is on for alternatives, including no-fault environmental compensation programs or caps on liability. This search has been encouraged in part by widespread reaction to media pictures of liability lawyers descending on Bhopal in search of clients. As the tragedy of Bhopal slowly wends its way through the U.S. court system, it may be instructive to examine a different way of handling an industrial tragedy—for example, the response of the Mexican government to the natural gas explosion on November 19, 1984, at San Juan Ixhuatepec. The disaster killed at least 500 persons, injured more than 2,500, and displaced 200,000 or more. It was marked by a restoration, reconstruction, and compensation process unmatched by responses to natural and technological disasters anywhere in the world. The response of the Mexican government, as chronicled by my colleague Kirsten Johnson, was remarkably prompt.2 The delivery of rapid, albeit rough and ready, aid and compensation in the San Juan Ixhuatepec: episode provides an example of an alternative to more traditional judicial processes that may be exceedingly fine but are also exceedingly slow. In the beginning the relief effort was marred by the same misplaced generosity that characterizes many disasters—unwanted clothing and undistributed food. But within three days of the disaster, large quantities of building materials were delivered to the site to be given without charge to all residents with damaged property. This led to an immediate spate of self-help reconstruction and general neighborhood improvement. One section of the explosion site was made into an instant park, ostensibly to commemorate the victims but also to preserve the area as a buffer to separate residential areas from land suitable for a future industrial site and to replace the scenes of the disaster with greenery and games. A health facility was put in place and a community center will follow, providing a minimal type of community compensation. To provide housing to about 200 displaced families, part of a newly completed housing development was acquired by the government, and before the week was out the first homeless families received permanent housing. Within another week 80 percent had been housed. On Christmas Day five weeks later, the Mexican national oil corporation 

MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL HAZARDS: SUCCESS, STRAIN, AND SURPRISE 216 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. (PEMEX) denied liability but accepted responsibility for the disaster and pledged to pay compensation of more than $10,000 per death victim. There were no precedents for such payments, so the payment schedule was adapted from the workmen's compensation code for the various classes of death and injury. Less than three months after the disaster, almost all the victims or their heirs were compensated. Three months saw a community rebuilt, the homeless housed, and the victims compensated. The speed of the settlement came at the price of an authoritarian uniformity—all victims received the same housing. Some were better off than before, others were surely worse off and removed from their former community. Some nonvictims benefited from the free materials. An occupational compensation scheme was adapted for public use that in litigation might have provided higher settlements. And the park was placed on the destroyed living area and not on the industrial site as some residents expected, thereby forcing the permanent removal of the homeless. But for most victims and for the public at large, some justice was done. A final example of a behavioral fix needed for the next decade lies in the development of third-generation ethics. The first generation of hazard management ethics was the ethics of nonmaleficence—do no harm to person or nature. These ethics were celebrated on Earth Day 1970, enshrined in regulatory law, and finally institutionalized in corporate codes of ethics indistinguishable from those of the Audubon Society—all in the space of a decade. The second generation of ethical issues attempted to weigh harms—to consider both benefits and the value of lost benefits as well as risk. The ethical underpinnings of this approach, an extension of cost-benefit analysis, were dominated by principles of utility. Third-generation issues concern equity, fairness, and distributive justice. They are concerned not only with the overall balance of benefit and harm but with their distribution to specific groups or individuals, with the fairness of the process as well as the outcome. These issues are prominent in many situations. Trying to avoid the exposure of women of reproductive age to toxic chemicals poses complex questions of sex discrimination, invasion of privacy, and protection of the unborn, as well as of establishing permissible levels of exposure (Hunt, 1979). A pervasive and ethically unjustified double standard in the protection of workers and the public exists almost everywhere. The standards of workers' exposure to toxic materials are 10 to 1,000 times greater than those applied to the general public (Derr et al., 1983). The Bhopal disaster illustrates still another double standard in safety performance, that of industrialized and developing countries (Gladwin and Walter, 1985). Hazardous waste disposal practices concentrate wastes gathered over a large area in someone's backyard and pass on a legacy of care and risk to future generations (Kasperson, 1983).