New and Emerging Risks

New and emerging risks represent a topical issue in the area of occupational health and safety. New and emerging risks appear in locations in which new machines and machinery are applied within new technologies, materials, and processes, or under the influence of various factors stemming from corporate social changes, that is, where new forms of organization of work are applied, for instance  

Mechatronic systems (e.g. modern automobiles, robots, automated cranes) 

Using Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) techniques (hardware + software) and technologies 

Combined load on muscle-skeleton body system and psycho-social risk factors (e.g. uncertain future of people and families), general uncertainties 

Risk occurs as a result of a variety of changes provided that 

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Organizations must be able to identify new and emerging risks and to propose sufficient measures for their elimination or reduction to an acceptable level, respectively. An aging labour force and the changes it brings represent one of the new risk factors. Solutions in this area will cause changes in both the woik environment and work life quality. 

Preventing new and emerging risks became one of the main goals included in the European Community Development is Horizon 2020 (2014-2020). The issue is dealt with by a number of projects and studies in the area of occupational health and safety. 

Identification and control of new and emerging risks is currently the subject of various scientific projects. The reason is the necessity to identify new dangers and hazards that organizations face prior to the occurrence of ensuing undesirable events. 

Geertsma R, de Bruijn A, Hilbers-Modderman E, Hollestelle M, Bakker G, Roszek B. New and emerging medical technologies a horizon scan of opportunities and risks. 

Depending on the needs of the individual pharmacy, several different types of insurance policies may be required to provide adequate risk protection for the business. The geographic location, type of practice, and services offered will influence the types of insurance needed. The risk management process is a continuous process, and periodic evaluations are necessary to address new or emerging risk threats to the pharmacy. Emerging threats discussed later in this chapter exemplify how recent changes in health care practices (privacy issues) and technology create new and different risk threats to the pharmacy. 

The Telecommunications responses were low and out of character in the survey findings and this may be a function of the fact that the survey covered both older more established industry players like Advent, Cannon, Orange and Motorola and also some of the new and emerging start-up companies in this sector. For some of these firms there may be lower strategic risks than for others and this may be the explanation of the anomaly in the findings expected. The Oil Gas anomaly is relatively more easily explained and appears to be a function of the fact that many of the respondent companies were located in the upstream or exploration and production side of the Oil Gas sector. 

Tanimoto T (2015) A perspective on the benefit-risk assessment for new and emerging pharmaceuticals in Japan. Drug Des Devel Ther 9 1877-1888... 

In this chapter, we will introduce some nuclear-based analytical techniques to study the charaeterization and potential risk of nanomaterials, especially the metallic ones, and their interactions with biological systems. However, it should be noticed that the study of interactions of nanomaterials with biological systems is a very new and emerging field. Publications on risk evaluation and ADMET (absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity) studies of these nanomaterials sometimes can not be replicated and contradictory results can also be found. 

Apart from of investigating the concentration of priority pollutants to assess the temporal and geographic trends as it has been done in the Ebro river basin until nowadays, the SCARCE project pretends to evaluate the consequences of the climate change in the water quality as well as predicting new environmental risks derived from water scarcity. This will be done by determining the presence of new priority (i.e. perfluorinated compounds) and emerging toxicants in Mediterranean river ecosystems in the Iberian Peninsula. In a subsequent step, the effects of chemical and environmental stressors on the biota will be assessed by combining field and experimental studies. The effects of multiple stressors will be addressed from a multi-biomarker perspective [27]. 

This trend makes it likely that tutu re tenor attacks will indude nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. An educated public and properly trained emergency responders can significantly reduce the risks from this new and devastating threat to the free world. 

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