Bounding Risk, Bounding Science - Setting Standards for Occupational Chemical. Roland Bal, PhD, Maastricht University, Dept. of Technology and Social Sciences, P.O. Box 616, 6200 MD Maastricht, The Netherlands, telephone +31 (0)43 388 32 42, fax: +31 (0)43 325 93 11, e-mail roland.bal@tss.unimaas.nl
Governments in all industrialised countries have developed policies to regulate the risks of new and existing technologies. Central to these regulations are exposure standards, which function as the cornerstone for further policy making and preventive measures. Standard setting bodies have been set up, that are mandated to provide for standards that are both able to protect health and the environment, and that should be implementable in industries. But how do such organisations work in practice, and how is the boundary between science, interests and policy drawn and maintained by those organisations? On the basis of both in-depth case studies and international comparisons of standard setting for occupational chemicals, this paper will argue that there is no a priori distinction to be made between science and non-science, but that this distinction is the result of concrete interactions within the process of standard setting, so-called ‘boundary work’. Furthermore, in order to be productive, standard setters have to translate the contingencies they find in practice into the rationalities that are asked from them by the provider of the mandate. In order to do this, specific tools have evolved in standard setting practices, that enable the co-ordination of the formal and the informal.
However, as a result of both internal and external pressures, the complexities with which standard setters have to deal, are increasing to the extend that these can no longer be productively managed within standard setting mandates. On the basis of the developed insights into standard setting, a proposal will be made as to the kinds of institutional changes that are deemed appropriate. These entail both the building of more horizontal relations, allowing for the introduction of reflexivity within the standard setting process, and a stress on the development of new co-ordination tools that enable communication across boundaries.
Literature
Bal, Roland (1998) Grenzenwerk - Over het organiseren van normstelling voor de arbeidsplek, Enschede: Twente University Press (in Dutch).
Bal, Roland & Willem Halffman, eds. (1998) The Politics of Chemical Risk - Scenarios for a Regulatory Future, Dordrecht, etc.: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
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