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Perception of Risk - Employer, Worker, and Juror Perspectives
By: Ronald D. Schaible, CIH, CSP, P.E. |
Litigation commonly involves incidents affecting workers who suffer injury due to hazards in the workplace. This is especially true in those states that have created a legislative standard for loss of tort immunity (i.e., "deliberate intent").This paper presents an overview of what risk is, its relationship to hazards, how it can be assessed and used to make intelligent business decisions, and how risk may be perceived by employers, workers, and those that help decide matters involving litigation - jurors.Introduction
The world is a dangerous place in which to live. This, despite the fact that advances in science and medicine have eradicated many diseases. Food safety has improved. Environmental measures have resulted, in some cases, in cleaner water being discharged into surface and ground waters than the water that was processed by the companies to make their products.Yet new risks have arisen in the technical and information age. Consider the risks associated with nanotechnology, nuclear energy, hazardous wastes, irradiated food, artificial sweeteners, air pollution, terrorism, and sexually transmitted diseases. All have risks associated with them. However, not everyone has the same perception of those risks. How one perceives risk is a decision made within the context of one's own life. It is the issue of risk, and the perception of risk by employers, workers, and jurors, that affects work place safety and workers compensation insurance claims.
What Is Risk?
A discussion of risk is best prefaced with a few useful definitions1:Harm: Physical injury or damage to health of people. Note: This may be a result of direct interaction with the [machine] or indirectly as a result of damage to property or to the environment.
Hazard: A potential source of harm.
Protective Measures: Design, safeguards and complementary protective devices, administrative controls, warnings, work procedures, training or personal protective equipment used to eliminate hazards or reduce risks.
Residual Risk: Risk remaining after protective measures have been taken.
Risk: A combination of the probability of the occurrence of harm and the severity of that harm.
Risk Assessment: The process by which the intended use of the machine, tasks and hazards, and the level of risk are determined.
Tolerable Risk: Risk that is accepted for a given task and hazard combination [hazardous situation].
Within the context of occupational safety and health, occurrences of harm stem from hazard exposure experienced in the workplace. These exposures include inhalation of or contact with hazardous chemicals, unguarded machinery, fire and explosion situations, and so forth. Therefore, a more comprehensive definition of risk could be "the measure of the probability that exposure to a hazard will result in a negative consequence." Risks are acceptable if they are judged to be tolerable ("acceptable risk"). Minimum risk is achieved when all risks deriving from hazards are at a realistic minimum. Minimum risk does not mean zero risk, which may not be attainable. Safety is defined as that state for which the risks are judged to be acceptable.
Risk Assessment Decision Matrix
Manuele2 provides guidance on establishing hazard categories as a starting point for evaluating risk. This framework can be used in any situation where death, system loss, or property, equipment or environmental damage is a concern. These categories require understanding the particular product or process being evaluated, and what the terms mean to an individual operation. Consider the following definitions of categories of hazard severity suggested by Manuele:
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