Intolerable risk

An operating philosophy that trains and rewards personnel for shutting down when required by safety considerations is inherently safer than one that rewards personnel for taking intolerable risks. 

Natural Resources Defense Council (1989). Intolerable Risk Pesticides in Our Children s Food, National Resources Defense Council, Washington, D.C. 

Risk management is understood in a broad sense in this context i.e. risk prevention or risk avoidance, dealing with accepted risks (risk management in a narrower sense) or reduction of intolerable risks. 

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report Intolerable Risk Pesticides in Our Children s Food focused on the increased risk of the adverse effects of pesticides on children. This was in part because of the smaller size of the child relative to the adult and because of different food consumption practices. Relative to their size, children eat, drink, and breathe more than adults in part because they are growing. The use and regulation of pesticides illustrate the complexities of risk analysis and risk management and the difficulties in determining an acceptable level of exposure with acceptable risks. In the United States approximately 1 billion pounds of pesticides (with about 600 different active ingredients) are used annually in the agricultural sector, and worldwide approximately 4 billion pounds are used. There are a range of human health and environmental health effects associated with the use of pesticides. 

Approach to risk management for hazardous chemicals does not explicitly include concept of an intolerable risk that normally must be reduced regardless of cost or other circumstances. 

Fig. 2.2 Acceptable, tolerable and intolerable risks (Traffic Light Model) (Source Renn 2008)...

Furthermore, from a regulatory vantage point, it can be mentioned that several risk reduction measures have been taken for these chemicals both within the European Union and in international conventions. The use of Penta, Octa and Deca in electrical and electric equipment is, for example, restricted in EU legislation through the RoHS Directive (2002/95/EC). Penta is also included (and Octa is suggested for inclusion) in the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic contaminants. Thus, decision-makers appear to have treated the available and often uncertain information on Penta, Octa and Deca as if their properties, use and emission were known to pose intolerable risks (at least to the extent reflected by the above described risk reduction measures). 

Increased hyperglycemia from steroids loss of control of blood glucose levels Increased GI intolerance risk of GI bleeding Increased risk of hypokalemia... 

A similar but opposite assumption is also in play with the prescriptive approach. The presence of a criterion may imply that the characteristic in question is the only means by which the system can be rendered safe . Continuing the HL7 example above, there is the assumption that the use of any other communication standard would be intrinsically associated with intolerable risk. Clearly this logic does not follow. A system may use a perfectly reliable vendor-specific message format, one that the manufacturer has utilised for many years and has a great deal of operational experience with. Indeed a change in technology to meet the requirements of the... 

FIGURE 1.2 Areas of acceptable, tolerable and intolerable risks (adopted from Renn 2008, p. 150). 

As mentioned in 2.6 in case the Social Risk level falls within the ALARP (As Low As Reasonably Practicable) region (tolerable risk) or above it (intolerable risk) it is recommended to evaluate the impact of mitigation measures. The mitigation measures can be classified as follows ... 

Patient safety has become a key value for our entire organization and the foundation of our operations. Patient safety is everyone s job. High-risk processes and procedures are analyzed to detect vulnerabilities and failure points that could contribute to an accident. Employees are engaged in anticipating where the next failure or accident may occur and are empowered to act in the interest of restoring safety if they perceive that we are moving into conditions of intolerable risk. Local teams operate with simple rules Fix what you can. Tell what you fixed. Find someone to fix what you cannot. ... 

Another application was the "huddle." In an air traffic control tower, team members engage in ambient listening to maintain constant situational awareness of the everyday activity around them and scan for irregularities or potentially emerging risk. When conditions are detected that are moving them into zones of intolerable risk, workers stand up from their cubicles to establish critical communication with each... 

Risks are quantified and categorized into one of three zones. The risks may include increases in census, increased patient acuity, and emergent activity. The green zone is described as comfortable, the yellow zone indicates risk-prone conditions and the need to be alert, and the red zone indicates conditions of moving into intolerable risk or what Amalberti (2001) calls "boundaries of excediency" (see Table 5.3). 

The major software safety standards promulgate a process-based approach. This approach is popular with developers as it offers clear guidance. However, it is difficult to argue that the mandated processes guarantee that the software product does not introduce intolerable risks. Moreover, process-based standards are not well suited to COTS software. Some new standards prescribe an evidential approach. These are better integrated with the system risks, but (currently) offer little guidance to developers and safety auditors. 

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