A Measure of Safety

Because an injury is minor does not mean that the event that caused the injury was. The event should be investigated and the potential and probability of recurrence evaluated. The next similar event may have more serious consequences as a result of luck factors (under slightly different circumstances). 

Most safety programs count the serious injuries as a measure of safety. This measurement method, while still accepted, is, in fact, a measuranent of failure. Assessing and controlling the risks of the business and the activities that make up the control measures should be audited and the result will be a more positive measurement of managanent work being done to combat loss (safety). 

A positive, proactive safety culture recognizes the fact that accidents and other downgrading events are caused by a sequence of events that can be interrupted and the accident prevented. Risk assessment will help predict potential loss events. This requires a culture wherein high-risk workplace conditions are not tolerated and high-risk behaviors are not condoned or accepted. This, after all, should be the object of a positive safety culture—safe working conditions and safe work behaviors. 

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Toxic operations must be supported by a good communications system. In laboratories where communications are inadequate, workers will naturally use "runners" for communication needs. This practice results in avoidable traffic in and out of toxic areas which increases the opportunities for contamination to spread. In emergencies, a phone or intercom can help ensure that assistance is tailored to the actual need. An "all purpose" response to an alarm will normally be less rapid at a time when speed may be of the essence. Video cameras trained on critical operations add a measure of safety, but annoy the workers who may feel that the purpose of the system is to "spy" on them. As a minimum, the laboratory doors should have windows so that entering personnel don t blunder into a rapidly developing scenario. 

A generally safe sulfur nucleophile is thiourea, giving thiouronium salts which are readily hydrolysed to the thiol, which can be oxidised to the disulphide. Since mishap is associated with separation of an explosive organic phase, an inert organic pick-up solvent, in which decomposition would be more controlled, should lend a measure of safety [14]. 

Maintenance workers frequently use blinds to provide a measure of safety on many assignments. The details of the blinding method are usually customized for each type job. If a vessel or a system requires significant blinding there should be a blinding list which is used as a checklist to install and remove them. When a Teflon blind is used with a steel blind, the Teflon sheet should be designed and cut with a protruding tab or ear. ... 

Loratadine is well absorbed after oral administration, with peak plasma concentrations at approximately 1.5 hours. Clinically significant relief of symptoms is usually obtained within 2 to 4 hours of the first dose. Excretion of loratadine occurs almost equally through the urine and feces.This dual mechanism of secretion provides a measure of safety in patients with liver or kidney disease, but caution should be exercised in both groups. Also, torsades de pointes may occur with the concurrent use of loratadine and amiodarone. Desloratadine is a metabolite of loratadine. 

The first round of so-called leading indicators was little more than a measurement of safety-related activities hours of safety training, attendance at safety meetings, participation in safety programs, etc. OSHA s crackdown on incentives that could potentially suppress reporting of accidents drove many organizations to base their incentives on these activity metrics rather than simply not... 

Stnictural safety, we have now argued, changes during the design and construction process. The rating value used in the fuzzy set analysis, however, was still a rather simplistic notion. What we really require is a measure of safety which improves as more information becomes available in other words, a method where the spread of the measure is restricted as more and more information becomes available. 

One must recognize that the main function of a measure of safety performance is to describe the safety level within an organization. .. in effect, then, measures of safety performance mnst... describe where and when to expect trouble and must provide guidelines concerning what we should do about the problem [p. 49]. 

Measurement is a prerequisite for control and prediction. The main function of a measure of safety performance is to reveal the level of safety effectiveness. A second purpose is to provide continuous information concerning the safety state. Measures of safety performance must help prevent, not just record, incidents. They must indicate where hazards-ielated incidents will likely occur and provide guidelines concerning the appropriate preventive initiatives. 

An injury is one of the many possible outcomes of an accident and is the most prominent consequence. It is tallied and used as a measure of safety effort, safety failure, or safety success. An (accidental) injury is defined as the bodily hurt sustained as... 

There is a fairly high level of uncertainty in selecting coefficients for model use. Some of this can be alleviated by using models retaining more detail of the advective flow field. In any case, where it is desired to assess potential spill impact, coefficients should be selected to provide a measure of safety. If results are still acceptable, then no further estimates are needed. If the predictions indicate a potential problem which disappears when upper limit coefficient values are used, it will be necessary to better refine the values. In general, lower coefficient values should be chosen to minimize mixing and provide conservative results. They should never be lower than the lower limits. For example, Dj. should not be less than 6/zm. ... 

Risk is defined as a measure of safety. It is defined as a measure, which combines probabihties of the... 

A quantitative target for measuring the level of performance needed for safety function to achieve a tolerable risk for a process hazard. It is a measure of safety system performance, in terms of the probability of failure on demand. There are four discreet integrity levels, SIL 1-4. The higher the SIL level, the higher the associated safety level and the lower the probability that a system will fail to perform properly. Defining a target SIL level for a process should be based on the assessment of the likelihood that an incident will occur and the consequences of the incident. Table S.2 describes SIL for different modes of operation. 

Williamson, A., Feyer, A.-M., Caims, D. and Biancotti, D. 1997. The development of a measure of safety climate The role of safety perception and attitudes. Safety Science, 25, 15-27. 

In order to identify areas of organisational culture that could be targeted to improve patient safety in Scottish hospitals, a safety culture survey was conducted. The aims of the study were first, to obtain a measure of safety culture from a sample of NHS acute hospitals in Scotland and then to test whether these culture scores were associated with clinical workers safety behaviours and patient and worker injuries. This would also provide a measure of safety culture within the Scottish acute hospital sector and contribute an organisational cultural perspective to the... 

Well Site Safety. Containment of a foam drilling fluid into a closed loop system provides a measure of safety that open systems do not allow. Hydrocarbons, acid gases and oxygen depleted air are kept safely away from personnel. Additionally, open foam pits can create a hazard, as they are typically plastic lined pits, that could allow the unknowing person to slip in and possibly suffocate under a blanket of foam. 

Accident and ill-health reporting, recording and investigation provide feedback as to the indirect and direct causes of accidents. The study of past accident causes provides information for the development of future pro-active strategies. The limitations of accident data as a measure of safety performance are covered in Chapter 4 - Safety Management Systems. 

In response to stakeholder concerns regarding the safety of maritime transportation, various approaches to ship collision risk have been proposed. Where the risk is seen as a measure of safety. Some studies concern probabilistic risk assessment and management. Such methods are aimed at probabilistically identifying areas of high ship collision risk e.g. using statistical methods (Friis-Hansen Simonsen 2002), traffic simulation (Goerlandt Kujala 2011) and combined accident statistics and ship domain analysis (Montewka et al. 2012). Another studies concern operational risk assessment, where ship collision risk is considered in real-time dynamic traffic situations onboard vessels or in Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) centers. Various methods for decision support in collision... 

We know of only a very few companies or safety professionals who have questioned the validity of incident rates as a measure of safety and even fewer who have done anything about it However, it is important to recognize that all measures have Umitations on vaUdity. Moreover, a measure like incident rates, which has low or, at best, moderate reUabihty must, of necessity, have limited vaUdity. It is important to discuss the limitations on validity. 

We found nothing in the literature regarding what underlying constructs might be measured by audits. Many authors assert that audits are a measure of safety performance. Audits may correlate with safety performance, but they do not represent performance in the sense of a criterion. A measure of safety performance should be related to loss. 

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