“…While the UAE has by all accounts leapfrogged into the post‐industrial age, its environmental and occupational health and safety programs have struggled to keep pace. Growing public concerns about occupational and environmental risks to health, including occupational health studies revealing unsafe work practices [Gomes et al, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002; Al‐Kaabi and Hadipriono, 2003; Al Nahyan, 2009], prompted the Abu Dhabi government to commission a comprehensive assessment of the risks to health of exposures to hazardous physical, chemical, and biological substances in air, water, soil, food, and workplaces [Li et al, 2010; Willis et al, 2010; Davidson et al, 2012; MacDonald Gibson et al, in press]. As part of this process, government agency representatives, scientists, industry representatives, and others in the UAE participated in a focus group process to prioritize environmental risks to health [Willis et al, 2010].…”