Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Besides to these threats, the modernization process determined the emergence of
some new typology of technological disasters such as those occurred during the
development of rocket technology. This new form of propulsion, which was
experimented in the early 1930s, de
nitely characterized the second post-war years
and the space race. The
rst accident occurred during the pioneering development
of these particular technologies can be considered the one that cost the live of Max
Valier, a South-Tyrolean pilot who was killed by the explosion of a rocket in 1930.
The most serious incidents took place, however, with the
ights during
the Cold War years and the space race between United States and the Soviet Union.
For this reason, a quantitative assessment of the accidents occurred during this
period must take into account the possibility that some events can be kept secret for
reasons of national security. Excluding those happened during test
rst space
ights on aircraft
and those that involved ground staff, the most serious accidents occurred during the
testing of space vehicles or training in special places. Among them those which
involved the Soviet cosmonaut Valentin Bondarenko (burned in a special oxygen
chamber in 1961) and the members of the mission Apollo 1 (Virgil Grissom,
Edward White and Roger Chaffee) died in 1967 when a
re destroyed the spacecraft
during a training exercise. Far more numerous, but with no victims, were instead
the accidents that occurred during the missions.
Apart for these factors, the increase of technological disasters during the second
post-war years was determined by the effects on public health of industrial pro-
duction. This increase could undoubtedly be considered a sort of negative aspect of
mass production and consumerism but it was also the result of the discovery (or the
con
rmation) that some pathologies were directly linked to some industrial pro-
duction processes. This was particularly evident for some chronic occupational
diseases. For example, by the gradual emergence of serious syndromes in many of
those who were previously employed in the manufacture of asbestos, a mineral that
was extensively used in construction and in the naval, railway, automobile,
chemical, food, metal, plastic productions. The dramatic link between exposure to
the
brous mineral and certain diseases emerged in these years in many industrial
sites all over the world. The long latency and cumulative effects, but delayed in
time, deriving from the exposure to some pollutant agents were also discovered
combining medicine, statistics and other important data on workers
health and
safety collected by trade unions, social and health organizations both private and
public.
An important role in the emergence of a new attitude towards technological
hazards management was also played by the media that contributed to increased
knowledge of the public opinion of these threats. But probably the most relevant
contribution to this change was due to the complaints also of associations and
organizations representing the interests of victims and workers and, especially since
the end of the 1950s and the 1960s, to the emergence of the ecologist and envi-
ronmentalist movements.
The effects on public health and environment of pollution caused by population
growth, industrial expansion, and technological change were another relevant
problem in main industrialized countries during the so called
'
“
golden age
”
of
