Human violations

Reduced potential for human error / human violation. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for protection of human health and welfare. These standards are defined in terms of concentration and hme span for a specific pollutant for example, the NAAQS for carbon monoxide is 9 ppmV for 8 hr, not to be exceeded more than once per year. For a state or local government to establish compliance with a National Ambient Air Quality Standard, measurements of the actual air quality must be made. To obtain these measurements, state and local governments have established stationary monitoring networks with instrumentation complying with federal specifications, as discussed in Chapter 14. The results of these measurements determine whether a given location is violating the air quality standard. 

For the sake of completeness, it is also useful to define at this stage the category of errors known as violations. Violations occur when a worker carries out actions that are either prohibited or are different from those which are prescribed by the organization and carry some associated risks. Since violations are deliberate acts, they are not, strictly speaking, errors. However, the violations category is useful when classifying human caused failures. 

Motivational campaigns are one way of dealing with routine violations (see Section 2.5.1.1). They are not directly applicable to those human errors which are caused by design errors and mismatches between the human and the task. These categories of errors will be discussed in more detail in later sections. 

The categorization set out in Figure 2.6 is a broad classification of the causes of human failures that can be related to the SRK concepts discussed in the last section. The issue of violations will be addressed later in Section 2.7.1.1. The distinction between slips and mistakes was first made by Norman (1981). 

This factor refers to the spatial organization of the information displays. In general, instruments displaying process parameters that are functionally related should also be physically close. In this way, it is likely that a given fault will lead to a symptom pattern that is easier to interpret than a random distribution of information. Although violation of this principle may not induce errors in a direct manner, it may hinder human performance. The following example illustrates this point. 

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... 

The crossing of limits is really the professional s problem rather than the client s problem. It is, after all, the professional s limits that are being crossed, and because of this, it is the professional who responds, often with anger or discomfort toward the client. What a professional should realize is that the client likely has no idea that he or she has crossed limits in the relationship. How could a client know a limit has been crossed if she or he has not been told about that particular limit Limit violation by a client usually is out of ignorance rather than out of spite. However, the professional often responds quite humanly to such a violation as if it were a threat and becomes upset at the client. 

When an accident report says that an accident was due to human error, the writer usually means an error by an operator or other front line worker. But designers and managers also make errors, not slips or lapses of attention as they usually have time to check their work, as well as mistakes or, less often, violations. 

The term terrorism, according to HSA, Sect. 4(15), is defined as any activity that — (A) involves an act that — (i) is dangerous to human life or potentially destructive of critical infrastructure or key resources and (ii) is a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State or other subdivision of the United States and (B) appears to be intended — (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population (ii) to influence the policy or a government by intimidation or coercion or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping. 

D.W. Cross, R.J. Carton, Fluoridation A violation of medical ethics and human rights, Int. J. Occup. Environ. Health 9 (2003) 24-29. 

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