Safety absolute

Elame-spread and smoke-density values, and the less often reported fuel-contributed semiquantitive results of the ASTM E84 test and the limited oxygen index (LOI) laboratory test, are more often used to compare fire performance of ceUular plastics. AH building codes requite that ceUular plastics be protected by inner or outer sheathings or be housed in systems aH with a specified minimum total fire resistance. Absolute incombustibHity cannot be attained in practice and often is not requited. The system approach to protecting the more combustible materials affords adequate safety in the buildings by aHowing the occupant sufficient time to evacuate before combustion of the protected ceUular plastic. 

To further improve the general safety standards, the Delaney Clause was included in the Pood Additives Amendment of 1958. The Delaney Clause states that no food additive or color additive can be deemed safe if it has been found to induce cancer when ingested by humans or animals (23). The Clause acts as an absolute prohibition on the use of any additive found to cause cancer without any regard for whether, or to what extent, the substance is hazardous to human health. As scientific advances continue, both in the realm of food technology and analysis of previously undetected contaminants, the... 

Safety is the freedom from hazards and thus the absence of any associated risks. Unfoi tunately, absolute safety cannot be realized. 

Relative risk results show only the difference between the levels of safety of one or more cases of interest and a reference, or baseline, case. Relative risk estimates can be used (as can absolute estimates) to determine the most efficient way to improve safety at a facility. But, the use of relative risk estimates alone does little to help ensure that the most efficient way is safe enough unless one of the cases meets qualitative safety criteria (e.g., compliance with relevant codes, standards, and/or regulations consistency with current industry practice). 

Sometimes the expected consequences of an accident alone may provide you with sufficient information for decision-making purposes. Conventionally, the form of these estimates will be dictated by the purpose (concern) of the study (safety, economics, etc.). Absolute consequence estimates are best estimates of the impacts of an accident and, like frequency estimates, may have considerable uncertainty. Table 4 contains examples of typical consequence estimates obtained from QRA. These examples point to the difficulty in comparing various safety and economic results on a common basis—there is no common denominator. 

Then, the absolute reduction in frequency, consequence, or risk can be calculated and compared to the cost of implementing the improvement, allowing you to determine whether the change represents the best use of resources to improve safety. 

The advantage of using relative risk results is that you can decide on the best way to improve safety at a facility without having to defend the absolute accuracy of the results. Relative results are also much less likely to be misinterpreted by people unfamiliar with QRA. The disadvantage of using relative results is that they, by definition, cannot give direct advice... 

There are several widely used approaches for developing perspective about the significance of absolute risk estimates (Figure 16). The first approach is to compare the risk estimates to historical experience within your company, looking for similar events. Most companies have safety and loss recordkeeping programs that date back many years. But if directly related data are sparse, you may widen your comparison to extrapolate from near-miss incidents that could have caused the event of interest. You will not, however, frequently find solace from the company data—or even comparable industry data. 

Another way of interpreting absolute risk estimates is through the use of benchmarks or goals. Consider a company that operates 50 chemical process facilities. It is determined (through other, purely qualitative means) that Plant A has exhibited acceptable safety performance over the years. A QRA is performed on Plant A, and the absolute estimates are established as calibration points, or benchmarks, for the rest of the firm s facilities. Over the years, QRAs are performed on other facilities to aid in making decisions about safety maintenance and improvement. As these studies are completed, the results are carefully scrutinized against the benchmark facility. The frequency/consequence estimates are not the only results compared—the lists of major risk contributors, the statistical risk importance of safety systems, and other types of QRA results are also compared. As more and more facility results are accumulated, resources are allocated to any plant areas that are out of line with respect to the benchmark facility. 

In the past, qualitative approaches for hazard evaluation and risk analysis have been able to satisfy the majority of decision makers needs. In the future, there will be an increasing motivation to use QRA. For the special situations that appear to demand quantitative support for safety-related decisions, QRA can be effective in increasing the manager s understanding of the level of risk associated with a company activity. Whenever possible, decision makers should design QRA studies to produce relative results that support their information requirements. QRA studies used in this way are not subject to nearly as many of the numbers problems and limitations to which absolute risk studies are subject, and the results are less likely to be misused. 

It will be apparent from the discussions in the previous sections that an absolute value of reliability is at best an educated guess. However, the risk of failure determined is a quantitative measure in terms of safety and reliability by which various parts can be defined and compared (Freudenthal et al., 1966). In developing a reliable product, a number of design schemes should be generated to explore each for their... 

As normally designed, vapor flow through a typical high-lift safety reliefs valve is characterized by limiting sonic velocity and critical flow pressure conditions at the orifice (nozzle throat), and for a given orifice size and gas composition, mass flow is directly proportional to the absolute upstream pressure. 

Hazards can be reduced or eliminated by changing the materials, chemistry, and process variables such that the reduced hazard is characteristic of the new conditions. The process with reduced hazards is described as inherently safer. This terminology recognizes there is no chemical process that is without risk, but all chemical processes can be made safer by applying inherently safer concepts. This book occasionally uses the term inherent safety this does not mean absolute safety. 

The percent absolute back-pressure for conventional and pilot-operated safety relief valves is ... 

Internal pressure P (absolute) at failure. (A typical BLEVE is caused by a fire whose heat raises vessel pressure and reduces its wall strength. Safety-valve design allows actual pressure to rise to a value 1.21 times the safety valveopening pressure.)... 

The key to safety in explosives manufacturing is to use isolated high-velocity nitric acid reactors that have only a veiy small hold up at any one time (that is, only a small amount of dangerous material is held up inside the reactor at any time). Units are widely spaced, so any accident involves only small amounts of explosive and does not propagate through the plant. Fire and electrical spark hazards are rigorously controlled, and manpower reduced to the absolute minimum through automation. 

Always install a relief valve that is capable of bypassing the full-load capacity of the compressor between its discharge port and the first isolation valve. Since helical-lobe compressors are less tolerant to over-pressure operation, safety valves are usually set within 10 per cent of absolute discharge pressure, or 5 psi, whichever is lower. 

In 1976 the Swedish government stipulated that no new nuclear reactors should be charged until it had been shown how the radioactive waste products could be taken care of in an "absolutely safe manner" (8). Consequently, the nuclear power industry (through their joint Nuclear Fuel Supply Co, SKBF) embarked on a program referred to as the Nuclear Fuel Safety (KBS) Project (8). In one of the schemes (9) a repository for spent nuclear fuel elements in envisaged at a depth of 500 m in granitic bedrock. The repository will ultimately contain 6000 tonnes of uranium and 45 tonnes of plutonium. The spent fuel elements will be stored in copper cylinders (0.8 m in diameter and 4.7 m in length) with a wall thickness of 200 mm the void will be filled with lead. 

Despite extensive development and a rigorous adherence to procedures, one cannot guarantee absolutely that a medicine will never fail under the harsh abuses of real-life usage. A proper quality assurance system must include procedures for monitoring in-use performance and for responding to customer complaints. These must be followed up in great detail in order to decide whether one s carefully constructed schemes for product safety require modification, to prevent the incident recurring. 

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