Norms industrial safety

Other social controls indirectly influence industrial safety performance, such as laws and norms for corporate governance that cause companies to inform shareholders and potential investors about corporate activities so they can make informed decisions about financial risks. If the activities are hazardous, these sources of financial support may need to be convinced that their financial risks are held to acceptable levels by evidence of effective safety management, which thereby makes it necessary for companies to develop and implement codes of conduct and safety management practices that adhere to industrial standards and comply with government regulations. ... 

In relation to the industry safety management, the request for an internal control system means that the industry is forced to establish a structured system for managing safety issues. Inherent in this system are also the technical and organisational prerequisites for making the right choices within the flexible framework defined by, inter aha, function requirements - and indeed also the prerequisites for identifying such flexibility. Consequently, the internal control as it is required under the safety legislation is a crucial factor in the industry s internal prescription of norms (5). 

D. Read, M. Andreoli, M. Knoper, C. Williams and N. Jarvis, The degradation of monazite Implications for the mobility of rare earth and actinide elements during low temperature alteration. Eur. J. Mineral. 2002,14,487-498 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Radiation protection and NORM residue management in the titanimn dioxide and related industries. Safety Reports Series, 2012, 76. 

Each industrial accident has provided valuable lessons for industriahsts and public authorities alike. The Seveso dioxin accident, for example, was the reason behind two European directives concerning industrial safety. Nevertheless, chemists know better than anyone else that there is no such thing as zero risk of accidents. The case of the AZF plant in Toulouse demonstrates that even an approved installation boasting a certificate of conformity with ISO norms can explode causing considerable damage. Despite the omnipresence of its products in our daily fives, therefore, chemistry remains a somewhat wild and unpredictable force. The apparently irreducible fact that chemistry poses a threat means that it needs to be strictly supervised and monitored. 

The ChemLeg program, in turn, focused on closer cooperation between policy makers, industry experts and national federations to facilitate the implementation of these standards. The main indicators of achievement were the enlargement of CEFIC with new full and associate CEFIC members representing nine of the ten Central and Eastern Europe states that subsequently joined the European Union the creation of an influential regional network of chemical industry and active involvement in European advocacy on the part of federations from Central and Eastern Europe (Doktor 2002). The political dynamics of trans-European industry mobilisation, organisation at the domestic and European level, and alliances with supranational and domestic policy elites and experts developed in full swing and in support of the horizontal diffusion of EU chemical safety policies and norms. 

As the project was considered as a pre-normative research effort, special emphasis was devoted to the translation of the toxicological data to risk assessment, to the provision of a scientific basis for safety recommendations on fibre-based food contact materials and to the dissemination of the results to various stakeholders (industry, regulatory bodies, consumers). The project was presented in the 3rd International Symposium on Food Packaging (ILSI,... 

An industry association that collects process safety metrics allows its members to compare their performance to that of other members. In some cases the reported data does not allow for identification of Individual members performance, so the comparisons can only be made to the association s reported norms. In other cases, more detailed information may be reported. In either case, this information can be valuable for validating a company s objectives and improvement efforts to ensure the company does not lag behind industry performance. 

Regulatory inspection To ensure that regulated industries meet meet or exceed regulatory norms. Examples are review of restaurants against local service codes, fire safety inspection of buildings, and safety inspection of workplaces. 

To summarize, risk is not risk. The principal distinction is between normative risk, the risk workers will usually accept passively (much as the theory of market choice claims they have already done at the moment of accepting employment), and extranormative risk, which becomes the focus of workplace and political conflict. The characteristics of unacceptable risk are its excessive level relative to a widely recognized standard, its apparently deliberate" origin, and the conviction of most workers that it can realistically be reduced. The experience of occupational safety and health in all industrialized societies consists of the emergence, evolution, and struggle over these workplace safety norms. 

People working in the process industries now take it for granted that safety is a value, even when their own organization has a poor safety record—no one ever says, Safety doesn t matter. However, such an attitude was not the norm 200 years ago. In his novel Hard Times, published in the year 1854, Charles Dickens satirically condemned the industriahsts who failed to acknowledge that safety and clean air were values, in and of themselves. 

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