An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance

Smart regulation, better regulation, responsive regulation, business-friendly regulation and voluntary ‘self-regulation’ have their origins deeply embedded in UK policies in the 20th century. Their aim generally is to reduce workplace regulatory obligations on employers. This can overtly or covertly...

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Autores principales: Watterson, Andrew, Beck, Matthias
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9564749/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36232071
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912771
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author Watterson, Andrew
Beck, Matthias
author_facet Watterson, Andrew
Beck, Matthias
author_sort Watterson, Andrew
collection PubMed
description Smart regulation, better regulation, responsive regulation, business-friendly regulation and voluntary ‘self-regulation’ have their origins deeply embedded in UK policies in the 20th century. Their aim generally is to reduce workplace regulatory obligations on employers. This can overtly or covertly undermine efforts to improve working conditions. In the UK, the historical control and regulation of beryllium (a toxic metal used in industry) illustrates this problem, and as we illustrate through an exploratory analysis of original archival material and official publications. Soft touch regulation of the metal beryllium was developed within the UK semiconductor industry when tighter controls were proposed in the 1960s and 1970s. Historical industry, government and science responses to health and safety information about beryllium provide important lessons for current debates on occupational health and safety.
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spelling pubmed-95647492022-10-15 An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance Watterson, Andrew Beck, Matthias Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Smart regulation, better regulation, responsive regulation, business-friendly regulation and voluntary ‘self-regulation’ have their origins deeply embedded in UK policies in the 20th century. Their aim generally is to reduce workplace regulatory obligations on employers. This can overtly or covertly undermine efforts to improve working conditions. In the UK, the historical control and regulation of beryllium (a toxic metal used in industry) illustrates this problem, and as we illustrate through an exploratory analysis of original archival material and official publications. Soft touch regulation of the metal beryllium was developed within the UK semiconductor industry when tighter controls were proposed in the 1960s and 1970s. Historical industry, government and science responses to health and safety information about beryllium provide important lessons for current debates on occupational health and safety. MDPI 2022-10-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9564749/ /pubmed/36232071 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912771 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Watterson, Andrew
Beck, Matthias
An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance
title An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance
title_full An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance
title_fullStr An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance
title_full_unstemmed An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance
title_short An Exploratory Study of Beryllium and UK Soft Touch Regulation: An Enduring Example of Weaknesses of UK Occupational Health and Safety Governance
title_sort exploratory study of beryllium and uk soft touch regulation: an enduring example of weaknesses of uk occupational health and safety governance
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9564749/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36232071
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191912771
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