Causal factor surveys

EPA ARIP Responses to questionnaires sent by EPA from facilities that have had significant releases purpose is to learn about causes and consequences of hazardous material incidents 1986-Present Supplements NRC reports for more significant events Additional information on causal factors, consequences, and company safety programs Data are easily analyzed for common causes Includes all states and localities Survey relies on voluntary compliance Not comprehensive limited to select cases Checklist approach limits value of information to understand root cause Not designed to be a lessons-leamed database... 

In general, the companies surveyed use one of two main methodologies to determine root causes. The first involves timeline construction followed by logic tree development. The second involves timeline construction, identification of causal factors, followed by the use of predefined trees or checklists. These two approaches are discussed in detail in Chapter 9. 

Several studies have clearly shown that the main causal factor for endemic goiter in Mali is the lack of iodine (Konatd, 1978 Soucko 1981 Soumano, 1976 Togola, 1978 Traord, 1990b). This notion rests on numerous epidemiological surveys and on the evaluation of iodine in water and foods. The level of iodine in the soil and in water and foods in Mali is too low to fulfill the physiological needs of humans and animals (Beilis et at, 1988a Konate, 1978 Soucko, 1981 Traord, 1990). 

Organizations can use a variety of processes to analyze workplace hazards and accident causal factors. Hazard evaluations and accident trend analysis can help improve the effectiveness of established hazard controls. Routine analysis enables an organization to develop and implement appropriate controls for hazardous processes or unsafe operations. Analysis processes rely on information collected from hazard surveys, inspections, hazard reports, and accident investigations. This analysis process can provide a snapshot of hazard information. Effective analysis can then take the snapshots and create viable pictures of hazards and accident causal factors. 

Why make so much of the idea on which the critical incident technique is based A system that seeks to identify causal factors before their potentials are realized would serve well in attempting to avoid low-probability/severe consequence events. Therefore, safety professionals should have within their endeavors a separate and distinct activity to seek those hazards that present the most serious injury or damage potential so that they can be given the priority consideration they require. Making hazardous incident recall surveys would serve that purpose. 

The book includes helpful resources in the appendices, such as a nurse safety perception survey, an accident causal factor chart, sample ergonomics symptoms report, sample TB exposure control plan, and a model respirator plan for small organizations. Complete with review exercises in each chapter, this book is ideal for certification training in nursing programs and as a reference for developing nursing in-service safety sessions. 

The overall conclusion that can be drawn from a survey of CPI data collection systems is that the better systems do attempt to address the causes of human error. However, because of the lack of knowledge about the factors which influence errors, the causal information that is collected may not be very useful in developing remedial strategies. General information in areas such as severity, work control aspects and the technical details of the incident will be required in all data collection systems. However, in almost all cases a structured process for causal analysis is lacking. Some of the requirements for causal analysis are set out in the following sections. 

A Hyx decreases. From the survey of melting temperatures and thermodynamic quantities it is evident that the entropy of fusion is the major, hut not necessarily the sole, factor in establishing the value of the melting temperature. A causal relation can he developed between AS and T . This relation is particularly striking for very high melting polymers where low values of ASu are invariably observed. 

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