Anna Vis
When I think about identifying risks it makes me think of waiting, boringness and costs. It makes me think of people who always see a risk in everything and because of that never dare to try anything with risks involved. I believe that is a very boring way of living, but when looking at innovation I do think it is an important aspect to take into account. When for instance asbestos was introduced as a new building material the perspectives were really positive. The material was fire proof, strong, longwearing, isolating and cheap. All in all the perfect building material and ideal for the breaks in vehicles. There was just one downside and that was that it causes cancer. Did they not know this when they started using it in building materials and breaks?
They actually did know, in the 1930’s in England and in the Netherlands there were already warnings given that working with asbestos caused cancer. Still the use of asbestos only increased after this period. Only after the government in 1998 forbid the use of asbestos, people and companies stopped using it. It just makes me wonder how people can actually keep on producing and using a harmful material. I think one of the reasons is that it takes ten to sixty years before the problems of asbestos shows. So people do not really see the risks involved.
Still when asbestos was used significantly the risks were known and the probabilities of occurrence as well. It would have been very logical, looking at it right now, when companies would have stopped using asbestos. Instead they denied the risks or ignored the warnings and in this way exposed their employers to the risks of asbestos. Even society was exposed to the risk of asbestos, because in the open air the amount of asbestos particles increased dramatically in these years. The government at first also didn’t react to the warnings for a long time. So they to exposed others but also themselves to the risks of asbestos. I think this is unacceptable, we shouldn’t accept being exposed to such risks.
I think this is an example where the risks were known but nobody really wanted to know about it because it would give huge implications. I also think that in the end people didn’t really understand the risks although the numbers were there people didn’t experience it. So I really believe that identifying risks is indeed very important when looking at innovations. When these risks are new we should not just set them aside because we don’t understand. As I think we tend to diminish the importance of a risk when we do not fully comprehend the risk. We should instead give extra attention to these risks and we shouldn’t stop before we completely understand them. We should never forget the importance of identifying and understanding risks with innovations.