Compliance with hygiene and other safety measures in the workplace was an important component of society's strategy for reducing infections at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular before vaccinations were widely available. We report the results of a field trial of well-established behavioural interventions (social norms, pledging and messenger effects) we implemented to improve compliance with such measures in an occupational setting. We use daily reports of own and other's behaviour to assess the effects of these interventions and supplement these subjective (self-reported) measures with objective data on hand sanitiser usage. The behavioural interventions tested have statistically significant but quantitatively moderate effects on subjective compliance measures and minimal effects on hand sanitiser usage. All effects of our interventions are short-term in nature and dissipate shortly after implementation. Our findings thus provide at most weak support for the notion that typical behavioural interventions can help support compliance with infection prevention measures in the workplace.

In the absence of government safety regulation in the field of nanotechnology, ISO standards are being used as the basis for establishing technical and management guidelines at an international level. There are more than 50 current ISO standards on nanotechnology. Some of these relate to the working environment and occupational risk management. In Latin America, entities that are members of ISO are enunciating national versions of the international standards. In this article, this context is analysed critically, starting from the Mexican standard on occupational risk management in the working environment. Even though risk management standards may guarantee better and safer working conditions, in the field of nanotechnology, they simultaneously unlock detrimental implications for workers and society. Reliance on such private and voluntary forms of industry self-regulation is identified as a by-product of global neoliberalism.