The Regulation of Occupational Health Risk of Nanotechnology: Based on the Protective Obligation of the State

• Main Authors: Wan-PingHo, 何宛屏
• Other Authors: Yu-Chen Wang
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/50444374028948609000

碩士 === 國立成功大學 === 法律學系 === 100 === As the nanotechnology applications flourish and lots of nanoproducts are flooding the market, there will be more manpower and money into the nanotechnology-related industries. Due to the lack of legal norms or management measures, the worker who engaged in nanotechnology-related work may be exposed to the nanosubstances that possibly harm the human health. The healthy risk which workers in nanotechnology-related industries encounter is the exposure to free nanoparticles mainly through inhalation. Because nanoparticles can possess specific physico-chemical properties that differ from their parent materials, for example toxicity or biopersistence, and occupational exposure is usually long-term and high-dose, based on the toxicological and epidemiological evidence, we can reasonably infer that the higher morbidity or mortality than normal. This situation is called nanotechnology occupational health risk. Based on the protective obligation of the state for workers’ right to health, from the traditional hazard defense background, the state developed the legal system for Worker Protection to protect the workers’ rights by imposing obligation on employers. From the traditional hazard defense system to risk prevention, the precautionary principle that developed from international law has played an important role. Therefore after exploring how the precautionary principle applies to the protective obligation of the state, we inferred that the protective obligation of the state could be the the basis of the constitution legitimacy to regulate the occupational health risk of nanotechnology. Owing to the legislative room for formation of law and the negativity of judicial review, we can only define the highest boundary of interference and the lowest one of protection; and further, we proposed the specific factors that should be concerned when deliberating. Then we summed up the above-mentioned factors to discuss the all the current regulatory measures that could be taken. In the end, we viewed our legal institutions and subsistent non-legislative act by comparative jurisprudence, and after concerning the difficulties and specific characteristics of the regulation of occupational health risk of nanotechnology, we tried to make some suggestions for the lack of current legal institutions and what should be ongoing about risk regulatory measures in the future based on the protective obligation of the state and comparative jurisprudence.