Fighting human nature

The soon, certain, positive, and natural consequences of risky behavior are hard to overcome. We are talking about comfort, convenience, and expediency. Now, consider safe alternatives which often mean discomfort, inconvenience, and inefficiency. The inconveniences involved in safely locking out equipment are illustrated in Figure 20.2. When you compete with natural supportive consequences in order to teach, motivate, or change behavior, you are fighting human nature. 

Russell, Edmund. (2001). War and nature Fighting humans and insects with chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring. Cambridge Cambridge University Press. 

E. Russell, War and Nature Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from WorldWarl to Silent Spring (Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 113—117, 122-123 Russell, Strange Career of DDT. ... 

People are at the core of health and safety. As research and experience indicates, most safety incidents are behavior related. It has been said that safety is a continuous battle with human nature but a fight that can be won with an appropriate investment in understanding people with all their capabilities, limitations, and behaviors. As such, successful health and safety management must be centered on people (Geller 1996)—both labor and management. However, the hiunan element is very complicated and dynamic, requiring constant attention and feedback. 

Safety is usually a continuous fight with human nature. This chapter explains why. Understanding this basic point will lead to less victim blaming and fault finding when investigating an injury. Instead, we will be able to find factors in the system that can be changed in advance to prevent injuries at work, at home, and throughout the community. 

In fact, it is often more convenient, more comfortable, more expedient, and more common to take risks than to work safely. And past experience usually supports our decisions to choose the at-risk behavior, whether we are working, traveling, or playing. So, we are often engaged in a continuous fight with human nature to motivate ourselves and others to avoid those risky behaviors and maintain safe ones. 

We need to understand a problem as completely as possible and from many perspectives before we can solve it. In this chapter, we explored dimensions of the safety problem by considering the complexity of people. I attempted to convince you that human nature does not usually support safety. The natural relationships between behavior and its motivating consequences usually result in some form of convenient, time-saving—and risky—behavior. Consequently, to achieve a Total Safety Culture, you should prepare for an ongoing fight with human nature. 

Competing with the lack of soon, certain, and sizable positive consequences for safe behaviors are soon, certain (and sometimes sizable) positive consequences for at-risk behaviors. Taking risks avoids the discomfort and inconvenience of most safe behaviors, and it often allows people to achieve their production and quality goals faster and easier. Supervisors sometimes activate and reward at-risk behaviors, unintentionally, of course, to achieve more production. Because activators and consequences are naturally available throughout our everyday existence to support at-risk behaviors in lieu of safe behaviors, safety can be considered a continuous fight with human nature (as discussed earlier in Section 2). 

Check out the two lawn-mower operators in Figure 8.6. Which one is having more fun Who is more uncomfortable Who is safe Chances are both men will complete mowing their lawns without an injury. So which worker will have enjoyed the task more Again, this defines the fight against human nature. Safety typically means more discomfort, inconvenience, and less fun than the more efficient at-risk alternative. 

First, let me reiterate the need for safety interventions. As I have said before, maintaining our own safe behavior is not easy. It is usually one long fight with human nature, because in most situations activators and consequences naturally support risky behavior in lieu of safe behavior. At-risk behavior often allows for more immediate fun, comfort, and convenience than safe behavior, prompting the need for special intervention to direct and motivate safe behavior. Activators are generally much easier and less expensive to use than consequences, so it is not surprising that they are employed much more often to promote safe behavior. Posters or signs are perhaps the most popular activators for safety. 

What is the relevance of habituation for safety It is human nature to habituate to everyday activators in our environment that are not supported by consequences. This is the case with many safety activators. Staying attentive to safety activators is a continuous fight with one aspect of human nature—habituation. 

Principle 11 Safety is a continuous fight with human nature. 

The critical aspect of this principle is that our actions and feelings result from what we learn by experience, both planned and unplanned. Basic learning principles can be applied to change what we do and feel. Experience and practice develops habits that are hard to break, however. Morever, it is possible that natural contingencies and social influences support a bad habit or negative attitude. So, learning new behaviors and attitudes often requires another fight with human nature. 

Rice bran is a storehouse of unique bioactive compounds. The human body is a remarkable self-regenerating system. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, wrote that Disease does not occur unexpectedly. It is the result of constant violation of nature s laws. Accumulation of such violations results in diseases . The possible involvement of all the bioactives of rice bran indicates a holistic approach to helping the body to regenerate to a normal state from a disease state. Holistic or alternative medicine does not treat or cure a disease but fights symptoms, makes the body handle the challenges... 

Contemporary interest in ubiquinones is explained by their potential antioxidant activity and the possibility of using these nontoxic natural compounds as pharmaceutical agents. But it should be noted that ubiquinones are not vitamins and that they are synthesized in humans. Taking into account a high level of ubiquinones in mitochondria, the effective supplementation of ubiquinones to fight against free radical-mediated damage seems to be a hard task. 

Interferons are natural proteins produced by the cells of the immune system in response to challenges by foreign agents such as viruses, parasites and tumor cells. Interferons assist the immune response by inhibiting viral replication within host cells. There are three major classes of interferons, interferon type I, interferon type II and interferon type III. They bind to a differen cell surface receptor complexes. The type I interferons in humans are IFN-o , IFN-jS and IFN- >. IFN-y is human interferon type II. All classes of interferon are important in fighting RNA virus infections and endogenous interferons are secreted when abnormally large amounts of dsRNA are found in a cell. 

However, the majority of natural products were not created to meet human needs and domestication in the form of chemical manipulation is required to increase potency, improve selectivity and reach a clinically acceptable pharmacokinetic and safety profile. Thus, while antibiotics are generated by microorganisms to fight other microorganisms and can be employed clinically to do so, natural cytotoxic agents are not produced to kill cancer cells and they... 

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