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Conference examined workplace risks and benefits, regulation, and international approaches to nanotechnologies in the workplace
Santa Barbara, Calif. – The National Science Foundation’s Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS), housed at UC Santa Barbara, recently hosted a major conference on health and safety in laboratories and industrial workplaces employing nanotechnology. The conference was being organized jointly by CNS; Harvard Law School’s Labor and Worklife Program; UCLA’s Centers for Occupational and Environmental Health and International Science, Technology, and Cultural Policy; NanoBank; UC Lead Campus for NanoToxicology Research and Training; and UC Santa Barbara's California NanoSystems Institute.
This conference, “Nanotechnology and Occupational Health and Safety,” brought together union leaders, human resource managers, social
scientists, media, public policy officials, and scientists to examine
issues relating to potential risks for nanotechnology researchers and
workers, and ways to limit those risks. A major objective of the
conference was to initiate a conversation on these issues between
specialists and practitioners. The unifying theme is that labor and
management should pay close attention to the new technology and
scientific evidence about its risks; and that the scientific community
should be aware of workplace concerns and the history of occupational
health and safety issues that have been important with past
technologies. The conference included reports on the experience of
previous technologies where this message was not full appreciated.
The three-day conference included six sessions: What is
Nanotechnology and What are the Workplace and Laboratory Risks?;
Present and Future of Nanoparticle Risk Measurement; Lessons of History
and Aspects of Workplace Risks; Current Regulatory Framework; the
Global Context; and Benefits Enhancement and Risk Reduction. The
keynote address was delivered by Joan Denton, Director of the State
of California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment.
More information, as well as conference presentations, is available online at: www.cns.ucsb.edu/nanoconference/.
Richard Appelbaum, Professor of Sociology and Global & International Studies, delivers opening remarks to the 2007 Nanotechnology Occupational Health and Safety Conference
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