Integrating the Social Impacts into Risk Governance of Nanotechnology

Literature on the risk governance of nanotechnology places significant emphasis on the potential social impacts of nano-enabled products. However, there is limited information on which social impacts are relevant for nano-enabled products, and a methodology to monitor them to support risk governance is lacking. This chapter proposes a quantitative methodology based on Social Life Cycle Assessment (s-LCA) and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to assess the social impacts of nano-enabled products through their life cycle. The s-LCA conceptual scheme (i.e. impacts and indicators for different stakeholders) is developed through an appraisal of literature on social impacts of products and Ethical, Legal and Social Impacts (ELSI) of nanotechnology, which is used to select suitable indicators in statistical databases. Five indicators associated with impacts of nano-enabled products, with two impacts in Worker category (professional training and non-fatal accidents) and three impacts in Community category (education, employment, research and development expenditure), were identified as relevant to compare nano-enabled products with similar functionality or nano-enabled product with their conventional counterpart. The indicators are organized within a conceptual scheme comprising benefits (education, employment and professional training) and costs (research and development expenditure and non-fatal accidents). A quantitative MCDA methodology is proposed and applied to a case study according to benefit-cost conceptual scheme. The gaps to be addressed to expand the future development of methodologies to assess social impacts of nano-enabled products are discussed.