Major accidents: more than a concept, a history of struggle that must be updated

Abstract

Events defined as major accidents emerged with the very industrialization process and alongside the development of new production technologies, becoming more complex in the early 21st century. This essay aimed to describe and contextualize the formulation of a concept that has sought to integrate topics related to workers’ safety and health with those of environmental health, workers’ struggles, and the democratization process in Brazil in a scenario of international division of labor, risks, and benefits. Considering the accidents and disasters in the 1980s and the more recent ones involving mine tailings dams, oil spills, and the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the authors identify more complex scenarios and new challenges for tackling this issue in the 21st century. Beyond dysfunctions in technological and organizational systems, the intensification of institutional vulnerabilities, added to the vulnerabilities produced by social inequalities, fuel the occurrence of major accidents and aggravate their effects, which, by being amplified beyond their spatial and temporal boundaries, especially affect countries in the Global South. We conclude that the recent events represent systemic expressions beyond organizational dysfunctions, revealing deeper layers of organizational and sociotechnical systems such as those forging the global economy and its profound asymmetries.