Principio de precaución y análisis de riesgo regulatorio: dos fuerzas sociales encontradas y ejemplificadas en el caso de las nanotecnologías.

This paper analyzes how nanotechnologies are regulated in terms of chemical products and processes. It aims to identify what historical and economic forces have fueled the two primary approaches to regulating chemicals. The methodology implemented here involved a historical and content analysis of what legally resulted in the two main regulatory instruments: regulatory risk analysis and precautionary principle. Historical and economic forces, on the one hand, are market forces, which are reflected in the regulatory risk analysis approach regarding risks, health, and sustainability and which tend to encourage market development and seek to individualize the technical relationships and potential effects of processes, technologies, and products. The forces of life, on the other hand, prioritize the protection of the health of people and ecosystems and are reflected in the precautionary approach. Although these two approaches do not appear to be contradictory because they have different intrinsic scopes (temporal, spatial, and social), they, as well as the concepts and methodologies that they promote, actually reflect social forces that eventually clash with each other. Both trends are here exemplified in the context of nanotechnologies. The results of the analysis show that the legal expression of those forces represents interests of various origins: those that favor the market in one case, and those that favor the defense of life and health in the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]