History of System Safety

One of the first mentions of the concept of system safety appeared in the technical paper Engineering for Safety presented at the Institute for Aeronautical Sciences in 1947. It stressed that safety should be designed into airplanes, and it continued by stating that safety groups should be an important part of the organization. 

It wasn t until the early 1960s and the development of ballistic missile systems that the system-safety concept gained a more formal acceptance. Contractors were given the responsibility for safety. 

NASA also implemented a system-safety program patterned after the Air Force standards. These programs were instrumental to the successful completion of many NASA projects, including the Apollo moon missions. 

The private sector has begun to develop system-safety programs because of the successes of the military and NASA. Leading the way are the nuclear power, refining, and chemical industries. The adoption of system safety in those industries manufacturing consumer products has generated returns in terms of more effective products, fewer accidents, and longer product life. 

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Thus, system safety was bom, or, more accurately, evolved. The history of system safety consists of... 

A bit of history on the evolution of system safety will give an insight into its origins, the need for the hazard analysis and risk assessment techniques which were developed, and the place that system safety has attained. Authors don t agree on when or where it all started. But, all the historical references on system safety do relate to the military or to aeronautics. 

C. W. Childs, in Industrial Accident Prevention Through System Safety, gives this brief history of the origins of system safety ... 

System Safety 2000 by Joe Stephenson. This book begins with a history of and the fundamentals of system safety. Then, the author moves into system safety program planning and management, along with system safety analysis techniques. About half of the book is devoted to those techniques. A safety generalist would find it a good and not too difficult read. 

Gives a history of the origin, development, and application of system safety methods. 

System Safety for the 21st Century is an update by Richard Stephans (2004) of System Safety 2000 by Joe Stephenson. Stephans followed the advice given to keep it as a primer. This book begins with a history... 

How will use of documents, materials, and information be enabled and long-term preservation ensured to maintain the history of the safety management system ... 

The history of the safety field goes back to 1868, when a patent for a barrier safeguard was awarded in the United States [5]. In 1893, the U.S. Congress passed the Railway Safety Act. Today, the field of safety has branched out into specialized areas such as system safety, workplace safety, and patient safety. A detailed history of the safety field is given in Dhillon [6]. 

The history of human factors in the French railway sector is long, even if it clearly remains within the deterministic paradigm. The addition of a safety installation increases the level of system safety only if the safe and unsafe failure rates are sufficiently low to compensate for the reduced reliability of the human operator in the application of procedures. This finding is particularly important in that such an addition is considered useful only when the increase in traffic overloads the operator whose error rate in applying the procedures is then judged unacceptable. 

The failure data for these rates is obtained from maintenance work requests supplemented by incidence reports and Licensee Event Reports from the 1975-1980 time period. The work requests provide a complete history of all repairs performed at Oconee. They are not restricted to safety-related systems, they are written during all modes of unit operation, and they are not produced in response to licensing-based criteria. 

History of previous incidents. Frequent incidents, especially serious ones, indicate a breakdown in process safety management systems. They also indicate that the facility may be more likely to have additional incidents, unless the underlying causes have been determined and specific actions have been implemented to prevent their reoccurrence. 

There is also a certain amount of statistical information available on the failures of process system components. Arulanantham and Lees (1981) have studied pressure vessel and fired heater failures in process plants such as olefins plants. They define failure as a condition in which a crack, leak or other defect has developed in the equipment to the extent that repair or replacement is required, a definition which includes some of the potentially dangerous as well as all catastrophic failures. The failure rates of equipment are related to some extent to the safety of process items. If a piece of equipment has a long history of failures, it may cause safety problems in the future. Therefore it would be better to consider another equipment instead. It should be remembered that all reliability or failure information does not express safety directly, since all failures are not dangerous and not all accidents are due to failures of equipment. 

Ephedrine has not been extensively studied in humans despite its long history of use. Its ability to activate 3 receptors probably accounted for its earlier use in asthma. Because it gains access to the central nervous system, it is a mild stimulant. Ingestion of ephedrine alkaloids contained in ma huang has raised important safety concerns. Pseudoephedrine, one of four ephedrine enantiomers, has been available over the counter as a component of many decongestant mixtures. However, the use of pseudoephedrine as a precursor in the illicit manufacture of methamphetamine has led to restrictions on its sale. 

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