This chapter approaches the emerging risks, impacts and challenges posed by
scientific and technological development to workers’ health and safety, to the
environment and to the society, using nanotechnology development as backdrop for the
discussion. Nanotechnology encompasses an extraordinary diversity of technological
approaches currently under development. It has created a relatively new industry. The
goods being produced and introduced into the market are usually innovative and
unfamiliar to most consumers. It was chosen as reference to this chapter, due to the fact
that nanotechnologies were identified as an important source of known and unknown
risks, as an existential risk, and due to the increasing uncertainties posed by these
technologies, regarding unique challenges in occupational health and safety, as well as
environmental, legal, societal end ethical impacts.
Keywords: Capital contradictions, capitalism, converging technologies, disruptive
technologies, nanoethics, nanotechnology, nanotoxicology, new technologies,
non-knowledge production, occupational health and safety, precautionary
principle, risk acceptability, risk perception, risks, scientific unknowns, societal
impacts, uncertainties, unions, workers.
