High Potential for Loss

The next near miss incident not only indicates the luck factor, but also the high potential for loss. An underground miner related this event  

We were trying to open the man-way doors to go to the surface. We could not open the door because the door to the shaft and the door to the station were open causing a temporary vacuum. We finally got the door open and the pressure of the air pulled me in toward the shaft. I almost ended up falling down the mine shaft had it not been for the retainer wire. 

Boylston (1990) refers to near miss incidents as potential problems. He also quotes the luck factors by saying that failure by an organization to recognize, evaluate. 

Consequently, there is little if any way to control the magnitude of the problem. Such organizations are lucky or unlucky, depending on the situation. This is no way to manage an organization (p. 103). 

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Accidents that have high potential for loss should be thoroughly... 

ICP-IDMS has high potential for the routine analysis of trace elements if accuracy is of predominant analytical importance [19]. In contrast to other calibration approaches, IDMS does not directly suffer from long-term changes or drifts in instrument sensitivity. Moreover, provided that isotopic exchange between the sample and spike is ensured, losses of analyte do not affect the analytical results. Additionally, IDMS can also be used to prevent the final analytical result being affected by analyte losses during sample pretreatment. 

PROBABLE FATE photolysis reported in experiments, but environmental significance is unknown, aqueous photolytic half-life 4 days, release to the environment can decrease due to photolysis and reaction with hydroxyl radicals oxidation too slow to be an important process, photooxidation half-life in water 84.5 days, in air 5.1-51.4 days hydrolysis not an important process first-order hydrolytic half-life >8x10 yrs volatilization not an important process, may contribute to losses at the surface of the soil sorption high potential for sorption by organic materials, rate is unknown biological processes biodegradation very important, but exact rate uncertain due to variations between data photomineralization may contribute to losses at the surface of the soil... 

Sanchavanakit et al. (2006) reported the responses of human skin keratinocytes and fibroblasts on bacterial cellulose (BC) film. The results suggest that BC film can promote the reepithelialization process. This may be a biological mechanism by which BC film facilitates wound healing. Therefore, BC film holds a high potential for therapeutic application for skin wounds, which is suitable for partial thickness dermal loss wounds such as donor site skin graft wound or post abrasive laser... 

High Potential Losses Incidents that produce limited injury or damage, but could have led to large losses of property or human fife need investigations. There is a high potential for preventing such losses in future accidents. 

Based upon the current design layout, there is a high potential for frequent crane control errors. Since the resultant effect of this hazard would cause damage or loss of parts, as well as processing schedule delays, the hazard category of critical has been assigned. 

The fact that the injury was minor in relation to the potential for serious injury does not rate this event as a near miss incident. It was an accident that resulted in minor injury (loss) and should be termed as such. The fact that there was high potential for serious injury that didn t occur does not qualify this event as a near miss incident. In some instances, an accident scenario could involve injuries, damage, and near miss incidents all in one event. 

In scenario one, a person is driving a motor vehicle and fails to stop at a stop sign at an intersection. This is a high risk act. The action had potential for loss. 

A luck factor exists here because the high risk act may only result in a near miss incident with no loss. For example, a motorist fails to stop at a stop sign. This is a high risk act, but there was no loss. The action only had potential for loss. The same action is committed, but this time another car, which has the right of way, narrowly misses the vehicle that failed to stop. There was a flow of energy, but no contact or collision, therefore, no loss. This is an example of a high potential near miss incident. 

The following Table 12.3 provides an example list of High Priority Jobs that might be considered as having the potential for loss-producing events. 

Temporary performance losses have been observed in PEFCs after long galvanostatic or potentiostatic experiments (Uribe and Zawodzinski 2002 Jarvi et al. 2003 Eickes et al. 2006 Donahue et al. 2002). All of these researchers found that this decay could be recovered by lowering the potential of the air electrode below approximately 0.6 V. Much of this decay has beeu attributed to oxidation of platinum, and reconstruction of these oxides, causing a reduction in catalytic activity for the ORR. Although recoverable decay cau be problematic, especially for devices intended to operate at relatively high potentials for long times, it is a lesser concern than permanent loss of platinum surface area... 

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