Section 4 Health Concerns

**239**

**Chapter 14**

**Abstract**

occupational health

**1. Introduction**

A Status Update

*Guillermo Foladori and Noela Invernizzi*

information and stricter health protection measures.

**Keywords:** nanosilver, risks, recommended exposure limits, regulation,

business organizations, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The regulation of chemical substances involves a difficult negotiation between social actors to translate often controversial scientific evidence about risks and safety into legal norms. When the regulation faces chemical substances with uncertain risk, as in many of the nanomaterials, the difficulties increase.

This article addresses the public discussion of a proposal for a voluntary guide to regulate the exposure limits to silver nanoparticles (AgNP) in workplaces in the United States. The draft guide, known as *Recommended Exposure Limits* (REL), was prepared by the *National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health* (NIOSH) on-demand from the *Centers for Disease Control and Prevention* (CDC), and went through two stages of discussion and rework during 2016–2018. We examine the public online discussion of both drafts by different social actors, basically academics,

AgNano, the Construction of

Occupational Health Standards:

The regulation of chemical substances involves a negotiation between social actors to translate controversial scientific evidence about risks into legal norms. This chapter addresses the discussion elicited by a public consultation on a voluntary regulation guide on silver nanoparticles (AgNP) in workplaces. It examines the comments made from 2016 to 2018 by diverse social actors – business representatives, non-governmental organizations (NGO), and independent researchers – to two successive draft versions of a Recommended Exposure Limit (REL) in working environments with AgNP. The REL is a voluntary guideline on permissible exposure limits elaborated by the NIOSH in the U.S. The methodology used was a qualitative content analysis, structured upon a historical and sociotechnical contextualization of nanotechnologies carried out through literature review. The findings show how different social actors position themselves in the controversy, revealing a pattern of behavior consistent with their position in the research, production, and commercialization of this new nanomaterial. While a group of actors, aligned with the interests of AgNP producers, proposed the restriction of mandatory and AgNPspecific regulation, another group of more heterogeneous actors, identified with the interests of workers and consumers, demanded more scientific and technical

## **Chapter 14**
