ABSTRACT
Working with hazardous chemicals involves significant risks to health. That much is clear. At the same time, manufactured chemical substances are a fact of everyday life and have contributed substantially to the technological advancement and economy of modern societies. These observations reflect some of the tensions of modernity. From the second half of the twentieth century onward, ways of dealing with them have preoccupied not only regulators and specialists in occupational health and environmental protection but have also held the wider public interest. In the 1980s the social theorist Ulrich Beck coined the now well-aired concept of “manufactured uncertainty” to describe the societal risks of modernization. The unknown risks associated with certain manufactured substances were among the examples he chose to illustrate his thesis (Beck, 1992).
