Mars and KOS,
Forgive me, I will get philosophical here:
The economics will almost always rule, since if the true economic cost is calculated (a rare event so far) it will include the safety and environmental impacts, and will therefore align itself with our values.
When we stray from accurate economic accounting (where some aspects are exploited without accounting for their use/abuse) then we get the skewed answers that dominated the 19th and 20th century technologies. The piles of slag near mining towns are examples of this partial economic "solution" method.
When the true cost of safety is accounted for, strong solutions with great safety records will be developed. As I have said before, we can be lead astray by those who want to spend too little on safety as well as we can be mislead by those who attempt to solve problems that are not problems, but that spend valuable resources.