Abstract
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.
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