Barriers, and Opportunities for the Adoption of Inherently Safer Technology

Incentives, Barriers, and Opportunities for the Adoption of Inherently Safer Technology 

Although they are conceptually similar, pollution prevention and accident prevention differ in the response they have thus far received from industry. Although many firms are embracing pollution prevention (some enthusiastically, some more tentatively), far fewer are moving to primary accident prevention. In all likelihood, this disparity is due to a difference in incentives. 

With regard to primary accident prevention, the same economic signals are not really there [2]. Firms do not pay the full social costs of injuries to workers (or to the public) and firms are under-insured. Unlike pollution, which has to be reckoned with as a part of production planning, accidents are rare events and their consequences are 

4) The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) has provided firms and the public with plant-specific information revealing large inventories and emissions of toxic substances. 

In earlier work, Ashford and Zwetsloot [2] summarized the barriers to primary prevention. These include  

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