THE BUSINESS OF LIVING IS INESCAPABLY HAZARDOUS, EVEN IN THE advanced industrial societies, for all that life within them has now become less nasty, brutish and short. In fact, the very process of technological innovation which has made possible the unprecedented affluence of these societies has also led to quite new dangers. In consequence, securing a reasonable balance between the advantages and disadvantages of innovation has now become an important government objective, and a vital one in the case of any technical development whose potentially dysfunctional effects would be catastrophic. It is with the political issues bearing upon the maintenance of this balance that this article is mainly concerned. Its scope is restricted for reasons of logic as well as of convenience to the specifically physical man-made hazards of industrial societies, and the unique psychological problems which these societies are often said to present are therefore not considered.