Safety

Safety and Risk

• Customers demand safe product and services and not
threatened by potential harm.
• However, there is a price for having this safety. In other
words, we may have to pay for this safety.
• To complicate matters, what may be safe enough for
one person may not be for someone else. This is due to
– Different perceptions about what is safe.
– Different inclination to harm.
• Absolute safety is
– Entirely risk-
risk-free activities and products.
– A degree of safety that satisfies all individuals or groups under
under
all conditions
• Absolute safety is usually not attainable nor affordable.

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Concept of Safety
“A thing is safe if, were its risks fully known, those risks
would be judged acceptable by a reasonable person in
light of their settled value principles.”
principles.”
• Safety is a matter of how people would find risks
acceptable or unacceptable if they knew the risks and
judge based on their most settled value perspectives.
• Safety is a subjective matter to the extent that value
perspectives differ.
• Safety is thought of in terms of degrees and
comparisons: “fairly safe”
safe” or “relatively safe”
safe”.
• This translate as the degree to which a group, judging
on the basis of their settled values, would decide that
the risks of something are more or less acceptable in
comparison with the risks of some other thing.

Risks
• A thing is not safe if it exposes us to unacceptable risk.
• A risk is the potential that something unwanted or
harmful may occur.
• We take a risk when we undertake something or use a
product or substance that is not safe.
• In regard to technology, it includes dangers of bodily
harm, economic loss, or environmental degradation
which can be caused by faulty products, or economically
or environmentally damaging solutions to technological
problems.
• Good engineering practice has always been concerned
with safety.

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Acceptability of Risk
“A risk is acceptable when those affected are generally no
longer apprehensive about it.”
it.”
• Apprehensiveness depends on
1. Voluntarism and control – less apprehensive about the risks to
which we expose ourselves voluntarily. May display unrealistic
confidence when we believe hazards to be under our control.
2. Effect of information on risk assessments – the manner in
which information necessary for decision making is presented
can greatly influence how risks are perceived. People tend to
avoid firm losses than to win possible gain.
3. Job-
Job-related risk – Often employees have little choice over this.
4. Magnitude and proximity – our reaction to risk is affected by
its magnitude and the personal identification or relationship
we may have with the potential victims.

• Engineers face two problems with public

conceptions of safety:
– Overly optimistic attitude. This is especially for things
that are familiar, that have not hurt us before, and
over which we have some control, present no real
risks.
– The dread people feel when an accident kills in large
numbers even though statistically speaking such
accidents might occur infrequently.

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Assessing and Reducing Risk
• Any improvement in safety in an engineered product is
often accompanied by an increase in product cost.
• Products that are not safe incur secondary costs to the
manufacturer beyond the production cost – warranty
expenses, loss of customers because of injuries, possible
production downtime, litigation, etc.
• It is important for manufacturers and users alike to
reach some understanding of the risks connected with
any given product and know what it might cost to
reduce those risks.

Uncertainties in Design
• Risk is seldom intentionally designed into a product. It arises
because of the many uncertainties faced by the design engineers,
manufacturing engineers and even the sales and applications
engineers.
• Design that do well under static loads may fail under dynamic
loading. There are also uncertainties regarding materials, design
design
and manufacturing skills.
• Engineers traditionally have coped with such uncertainties about
materials or components, as well as incomplete knowledge about
the actual operating conditions of their products, by introducing
introducing a
comfortable “factor of safety”
safety”.
• This factor is intended to protect against problems that arise when
when
the stresses due to anticipated loads depart from their expected
values.

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Risk-benefit analyses
• Many large projects are justified on the basis of a risk-
risk-
benefit analysis.
• We are willing to take certain levels of risk as long as the
project promises sufficient benefit.
• If risk and benefit can both be readily expressed in a
common set of units ($$), then it is relatively easy to
carry out a risk-
risk-benefit analysis.
• Both risks and benefits lie in the future. Since there is
uncertainties associated with them, we use expected
values by multiplying the magnitude of potential loss by
the probability of its occurrence (similar with the gain).

• Personal risk – the difficulty in assessing

personal risks is magnified when we consider
involuntary risks. In regard to voluntary
activities, one could possibly make judgments on
the basis of the amount of life insurance a
person buys.
• Public risk – are more easily determined because
individual differences even out as large numbers
of people are considered. Statistical parameters
take on greater significance.

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Safe Exits
• It is almost impossible to build a completely safe product
or one that will never fail. The best one can do is to
ensure that when a product fails,
– It will fail safely.
– The product can be abandoned / repaired safely.
– The user can safely escape the product.
• It is necessary for the user to have procedures for
regular maintenance and safety checks.
• There should be
– Avenues for employees to report hazardous conditions.
– Emergency procedures.

Occupational Safety and Health

• Organizations not only need to reduce the
occurrence of accidents, but aim for zero
accidents.
• Everyday, there are over thousands of accidents
caused by some failures of people, equipment,
or the surrounding working environment.
• All these unplanned incidents cause the loss of
life, injury or property damage.
• Most accidents can be traced to poor
management policies, procedures and decision,
where the cases are avoidable.

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• Causes of accident can be grouped as
– Direct: attributed to equipment failure or unsafe operating condition
condition or
caused by hazardous material.
– Indirect: Hidden or not as readily apparent, can be generally being
being tied
to some human shortcoming or failure. Eg.Eg. Unsafe act by inattentive or
untrained personnel, unsafe operating condition as the result of
inadequate planning, faulty process design, or poor plant layout.
layout.
– Root Causes: Poor management practices and inappropriate or
inadequate safety policies and procedures. Future accidents can be
reduced by eliminating potential causes through investigation.
• Job safety analysis is used to study the basic procedures of the job,
identify the hazard and prescribe appropriate safety precautions.
precautions.
• Hazard analysis is a systematic approach to analyze and identify
hazards and further recommend corrective action.
• Engineers are not only involved in designing end products but they
they
are also responsible in designing a suitable workplace.

Occupational Safety & Health In

Malaysia
• The Machinery Ordinance 1953 marks the birth of the
Machinery Department until 1967.
• In 1967, with the proclamation of the Factories and
Machinery Act 1967 (FMA 1967), the Machinery
Department expanded to become the Factories and
Machinery Department (FMD),
• With the development of the Occupational Safety and
Health Act 1994 (OSHA 1994), FMD was restructured
and transformed into the Department of Occupational
Safety and Health (DOSH). DOSH is now the premier
government authority responsible for occupational
safety, health and welfare of persons at work, and or
other persons affected by the activities of persons at
work.

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Department of Occupational Safety
and Health (DOSH)
• DOSH is a department under the Ministry of Human Resources.
• It is responsible for ensuring the occupational safety, health and
and welfare of
people at work as well as protecting other people from the safety
safety and
health hazards arising from the activities of various sectors which
which include
manufacturing, agriculture, forestry and fishing, transport, storage
storage and
communication, public services and statutory authorities, utilities,
utilities, finance,
insurance, real estate and business services.
• The priciple objectives of DOSH are:
– To draft (legislation) and regularly review via a tripartite process
process the policies,
laws, codes of practice and guidelines pertaining to occupational
occupational safety, health
and welfare as a basis for ensuring safety and health at work
– To ensure, through enforcement and promotion activities, that employers,
employers, self-
self-
employed persons, designers, manufacturers or suppliers, importers
importers and
employees always practice a safe and healthy work culture and constantly
constantly
comply with the existing laws, codes of practice and guidelines.
– To assist and provide specialist services in promotion activities,
activities, training,
information dissemination and research activities organized by government
government and
non-
non-government agencies, institutions of higher learning, and associations
associations of
employers, employees and/or professionals in the effort to further
further upgrade the
standard of occupational safety, health and welfare.