The concept of safety

Safety may be defined as relative absence of harm. When using the word safety we often mean something else. For example, safety data often means collection of reports of harm. Safety departments in the pharmaceutical industry are generally focused much more on harm than safety. And yet how safe something is a key question for the user and one that pharmacovigilance is 

To assess how safe something is we need to identify and measure the risks of harm associated with it. Risk is the probability of an adverse outcome. It may be expressed in the following terms  

Baseline risk Relative risk No. of extra cases per million 

If900 patients use a new antibiotic and 0 allergic reactions occur then it is statistically unlikely that such reactions will occur more frequently than 1 in 300 patients (i.e. 1 in 900/3). 

The rule of three works very weU provided the size of the population is at least 30 and thus, in the context of drug safety, it usually is applicable. 

---

Stating a definition of safety is often overlooked in safety research, and the concept of safety is not as obvious as it may seem, often being associated merely with the absence of risk. Literature contains many different definitions of risk (see for different examples of definitions Adams (Adams, 1995) Lees (Lees, 1996), IEC 61508 (IEC 61508, 2000)). The IEC (IEC 61508, 2000), defines risk as a combination of the probability of an occurrence of harm and the severity of this harm. Harm is... 

The concept of safety and how it impacts the biter sechon is summed up as follows ... 

To avoid hazards resulting from the ingestion of naturally-occurring toxicants in various foodstuffs, Coon (81) advanced the concept of "Safety in Numbers." That is, the wider the variety of food intake, the less chance any one constituent can reach a hazardous level in the diet. Another concept "Safety through Technology" can be practiced, by which food processing is used to destroy or eliminate the toxicant. 

Completely change the concept of safety education and training... 

Coal enterprise leaders must first thoroughly change the concept of safety education training, pay attention to the cultivation of technical talents. For... 

Sun Ji-Ping. Research on the Concept of Safety Production in Coal Mines [J]. Journal of China Coal Society, 2011, 36(02) 313-316. 

The basic reason why most employees go to work each day is to acquire a pay-check. To most employees, the concept of safety and loss prevention is fundamental in nature—that is, they want to return home after work the same way they began work. Thus, employee groups (with the exception of employees with profit-sharing or employee ownership) could not care less what costs the company is incurring as a result of injuries. This group is more concerned with how such a safety program is going to affect the individual, the actual woik activities, and the paycheck. 

The final box in Figure 1.3 is to do with the concept of safety culture—a topic that is the focus of much current discussion and development. This topic is discussed in Chapter 3. 

Section 45 of the Petroleum Activities Act in 1985. While the petroleum industry and the fire and explosion prevention legislation included the worker s physical environment in the concept of safety, the Working Environment Act used the broader concept of working environment" (NOU 1987 loA, p. 10). 

After stressing the importance of Safety Forum as a tripartite arena, both union representatives were more concerned with, and critical of, the oil companies than reflecting on their own role and contribution. Karlsen spoke frankly about the issue of power and underscored that the earlier power tactics of the oil companies were not as easy to deploy in the face-to-face setting in the forum. Furre, for his part, raised the question of who has the power to define and operationalise the concept of safety, and the influence of cultural differences in this respect. The two quotes demonstrate that the unions were in favour of Safety Forum but they still went on attacking the oil companies. 

Under the caption The Concept of Safety (Section 5), this appears in the ISO/IEC Guide 51 Safety Aspects—Guidelines for Their Inclusion in Standards. ... 

It is most cost effective to design for safety, health, and environmental considerations upstream where the abihty to influence is greatest. In addition to reducing risk, the concept of Safety in the Design Process has also been demonstrated to... 

The concept of Safety in the Design Process requires a coordinated effort between the engineering and the safety, health, and environmental communities. Our bulletin xyz establishes when safety, health, and environmental studies are necessary in the consideration of new products, technology, and manufacturing processes. Please review current and future programs to ensure that safety, health, and environmental issues are considered in the early stages of concept and design. 

The concept of safety ( Safety is achieved by reducing risk to a tolerable level )... 

During the 1990s the concept of Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) was developed [1]. It serves to assess safety-related systems and concerns aU components and subsystems required to realize safety functions from the sensor to the final element. Apart from that it applies to application software, which was developed for systems with limited variability language (no branching) or programmable logic controllers (PLC). 

The concept of safety integrity level (SIL) has two aspects, the first relating to functions and the second relating to systems. 

The concept of safety culture considers the critical importance of management action regarding safety as well as operational, engineering and other support personnel. In this way, it reflects the movement (e.g. in safety occurrence investigation) from so-called operator error to systemic issues in recent years (e g. Reason 1997 Dekker 2006). The concept also does not necessarily have a... 

---