Variance actions

One possible solution that creative safety and health professionals may want to explore is the use of a variance action. In short, a variance allows the safety and health professional to analyze the unique situation and offer alternative methods through which to create a safe and healthfnl working environment outside of the specific standard. 

Safety and health professionals should be aware that there are several different types of variance actions to consider, including permanent variances, temporary variances, experimental variances, as well as variances for National Defense and recordkeeping as well as interim orders that often accompany the variance actions. Safety and health professionals should carefully analyze their unique situation and draft the written request specifically identifying the unique situation, any/all applicable standards, type of variance requested, and posting of notice and related information. It is important that safety and health professionals carefully analyze and research the situation with attention to applicable standards, interpretations, similar variance actions, and related research before applying for a variance. 

Discuss the possible use of a variance action and provide an example. 

Take the agreed action and check that the variance has been corrected. 

When deciding on repair or rework action, you may need to consider whether the result will be visible to the customer on the exterior of the product. Rework or repairs that may not be visible when a part is fitted into the final assembly might be visible when these same parts are sold as service spares. To prevent on-the-spot decisions being at variance each time, you could ... 

This series of prohibitions restricts how wastes subject to LDR requirements are handled. The most visible aspect of the LDR program is the disposal prohibition, which includes treatment standards, variances, alternative treatment standards (ATSs), and notification requirements. Land disposal means placement in or on the land, except in a corrective action unit, and includes, but is not limited to, placement in a landfill, surface impoundment, waste pile, injection well, land treatment facility, salt dome formation, salt bed formation, underground mine or cave, or placement in a concrete vault, or bunker intended for disposal purposes. The other two components work in tandem with the disposal prohibition to guide the regulated community in proper hazardous waste management. The dilution prohibition ensures that wastes are properly treated, and the storage prohibition ensures that waste will not be stored indefinitely to avoid treatment. 

Calibration curves yield the best precision at the mean concentration of the standards. For example, a curve based on standard with concentrations of 1, 4 and 10 yields best precision at 5 (assuming constant variance). To achieve maximum precision the standards should be selected so that their mean concentration is equal to the most important sample concentration, such as an action level. The curve will yield increasingly poor precision with increasing distance from this mean. 

To demonstrate this statistically, Phil Kysor and I compiled the intercorrelations among the 12 tasks at various experimental times (Fig. 42). Statistically, the matrices shown above simply demonstrate that the variance in scores are progressively accounted for by intensity of dmg effects. Thus, one can predict individual impairment in all skill areas by the degree to which drug action affects performance in any single task. This applies, incidentally, to individuals who may be quite dissimilar in various abilities prior to the administration of a belladonnoid drug such as EA 3580. 

Unfortunately, few of the studies that have attempted to relate the blood concentrations of neuroleptics to therapeutic response have fulfilled all these criteria. There is a suggestion that a "thera peutic window" exists for some phenothiazine neuroleptics. A therapeutic window is a range of concentrations of a drug measured in the blood that are associated with a good therapeutic response. Plasma concentrations outside this range are either too low to ensure a therapeutic response or so high that they induce toxic side effects. Despite the numerous studies of the relationship between the plasma concentration and the therapeutic response for a number of "standard" neuroleptics, it would appear that such correlations rarely account for more than 25% of the variance in clinical response to treatment. The existence of a therapeutic window for neuroleptics would therefore appear to be unproven. However, there could be ranges of plasma concentrations associated with optimal antipsychotic action, but these... 

For monitoring to clc substances, such as dioxin cleanup, assume we have calculated an x and s for each unit area or rectangular panel potentially needing cleanup and have been given an action level of 1 ppb. The action level Is a constant and has no variance. The x and s are computed from a field triplicate of a composite of subsamples equally spaced from a uniform grid covering the panel. The null hypothesis says "no difference," and represents the status quo. Hopefully, nonpolluted or less than 1 ppb Is the status quo, and polluted or equal to or larger than 1 ppb Is the exception. 

Certain structural features, including whether it contains functional groups such as aldehydes, ketones, nitriles, or isocyanates, often define a class of chemicals. If information on the mechanism of action of a hazardous property of a chemical is not known, or if variances in the chemical s hazard through structural modification cannot be determined, then the assumption that certain chemically reactive functional groups can react similarly with the body or in the environment is often a good starting point in the process of evaluating the safety of solvents. 

Effect = Affinity for site of action x Drug ievei x Bioiogicai variance... 

During the mid-1980s, insurance against risks posed by synthetic organic chemicals was expensive and sometimes impossible to obtain, for two reasons. First, real interest rates had exhibited extreme variance during the previous 15 years. Real interest rates affect premiums for lines of insurance, such as medical malpractice and environmental liability, that pay claims years after premiums are collected. Second, the use of retroactive strict liability in the "Superfund" law and in various tort decisions has extracted wealth from insurance companies and made them wary of writing policies that could expose them to future legislative and court actions. 

Table 6.7 illustrates example 5. In example 5, consider an infinite horizon with 6 =. 99. To model the time variance of myopia in a simple and extreme way, suppose that P, = 1 for odd t and pt - 0 for even /. TCs refrain always, since any other course of action yields a negative average utility. Hitting always yields utility profile 2, -1, -1, -1,..., and the cost of refraining when hooked (-5) outweighs the benefit of hitting when unhooked (2), so any pattern of moderate consumption also will not be attractive. 

Any shortcoming in a standard can only be put right after analysis has pinpointed the problems. Hence, standards committees cannot act quickly if an interlaboratory trial reveals excessive variability. It is highly unlikely that faults in standards account for the majority of variance, although clearly it is important that any that do exist are identified and action taken. 

Sir Geoffrey Taylor has recently discussed the dispersion of a solute under the simultaneous action of molecular diffusion and variation of the velocity of the solvent. A new basis for his analysis is presented here which removes the restrictions imposed on some of the parameters at the expense of describing the distribution of solute in terms of its moments in the direction of flow. It is shown that the rate of growth of the variance is proportional to the sum of the molecular diffusion coefficient, D, and the Taylor diffusion coefficient ko2U2/D, where U is the mean velocity and a is a dimension characteristic of the cross-section of the tube. An expression for k is given in the most general case, and it is shown that a finite distribution of solute tends to become normally distributed. 

This paper discusses the impact of wind action on natural-draft cooling towers. The structure of the wind load may be divided into a static, a quasistatic, and a resonant part. The effect of surface roughness of the shell and of wind profile on the static load is discussed. The quasistatic load may be described by the variance of the pressure fluctuations and their circumferential and meridional correlations. The high-frequency end of the pressure spectra and of the coherence functions are used for the analysis of the resonant response. It is shown that the resonant response is small even for very high towers, however, it increases linearly with wind velocity. Equivalent static loads may be defined using appropriate gust-response factors. These loads produce an approximation of the behavior of the structure and in general are accurate. 11 refs, cited. 

Two-way analysis of variance (and higher classifications) leads to the presence of interactions. If, for example, an additive A is added to a lube oil stock to improve its resistance to oxidation and another additive, B, is added to inhibit corrosion by the stock under load or stress, it is entirely possible that the performance of the lube oil in a standard ball-and-socket wear test will be different from that expected if only one additive has present. In other words, the presence of one additive may adversely or helpfully affect the action of the other additive in modifying the properties of the lube oil. The same phenomenon is clearly evident in a composite rocket propellant where the catalyst effect on burning rate of the propellant drastically depends on the influence of fine oxidizer particles. These are termed antagonistic and synergistic effects, respectively. It is important to consider the presence of such interactions in any treatment of multiply classified data. To do this, the two-way analysis of variance table is set up as shown in Table 1.24. 

The assessment of project activities may include performance and systems audits, data quality audits, peer review, PE samples, as appropriate for a given project. Assessment enables project personnel to identify field and laboratory problems or variances from the project scope and to implement timely corrective action. The findings and response actions originating from assessment activities are documented in reports to management. 

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