Safety
Safety is the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event. Protection involves here both causing and exposure. It can include physical protection or that of possessions. Safety is often in relation to some guarantee of a standard of insurance to the quality and unharmful function of a thing or organization. It is used in order to ensure that the thing or organization will do only what it is wanted to do. In order to assure your safety, you must not push it to the limit.
Types of potential problem situations
A person or organization may want safety from numerous types of actual or potentially detrimental situations such as:
- personal physical injury
- financial/economic damage
- injury to one's political influence
- emotional injury
- psychological damage
- damage to one's personal reputation
- damage to a company's image in the community
- reduction in market share from business competition
- reduction in business efficiency
- governmental regulation
- regulation by industry organizations
- governmental penalties
- tax increases
- increased expenses
- personal property damage
- damage to real estate
- air, water or land pollution
- pushing it to the limit
Safety-critical systems
Safety-critical systems, sometimes referred to as mission-critical systems or life-critical systems, are those systems whose failure could result in loss of life, significant property damage, or damage to the environment. There are many well-known examples in different areas, such as medical devices, aircraft flight control, weapons, and nuclear systems. Many modern information systems (systems involving software) are becoming safety-critical in a general sense because financial loss and even loss of life can result from their failure.
System Safety and Reliability Engineering
System Safety and Reliability Engineering is an engineering discipline. Continuous changes in technology, environmental regulation, public safety concerns make the analysis of complex safety-critical systems more and more demanding.
Risk Management
Risk management is the art and science of identifying risks, determining how significant they are, deciding whether they are worth taking, and recommending measures to reduce or eliminate particular risks.
Safety measures
Safety measures are activities and precautions taken to improve safety or reduce risk. Common safety measures include:
- Visual examination for dangerous situations such as emergency exits blocked because they are being used as storage areas.
- Visual examination for flaws such as cracks, peeling, loose connections.
- Chemical analysis
- X-ray analysis to see inside a sealed object such as a weld, a cement wall or an airplane outer skin.
- Destructive testing of samples
- Stress testing subjects a person or product to stresses in excess of those the person or product is designed to handle, to determining the "breaking point".
- Safety margins. For instance, a product that should never be required to handle more than 200 pounds might be designed to withstand at least 300 pounds.
- Implementation of standard protocols and procedures so that activities are conducted in a known way.
- Training of employees, vendors, product users
- Instruction manuals explaining how to use a product or perform an activity
- Instructional videos demonstrating proper use of products
- Examination of activities by specialists to minimize physical stress or increase productivity
- Government regulation so suppliers know what standards their product is expected to meet.
- Industry regulation so suppliers know what level of quality is expected. Industry regulation is often imposed to avoid potential government regulation.
- Self-imposed regulation of various types.
- Statements of Ethics by industry organizations or an individual company so its employees know what is expected of them.
- Drug testing of employees, etc.
- Physical examinations to determine whether a person has a physical condition that would create a problem.
- Periodic evaluations of employees, departments, etc.
- Bomb-sniffing dogs.
- Drug-sniffing dogs.
- Geological surveys to determine whether land or water sources are polluted, how firm the ground is at a potential building site, etc.
Standards organizations
A number of standards organizations exist that promulgate safety standards. These may be voluntary organizations or government agencies.
American National Standards Institute
A major American standards organization is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Usually, members of a particular industry will voluntarily form a committee to study safety issues and propose standards. Those standards are then recommended to ANSI, which reviews and adopts them. Many government regulations require that products sold or used must comply with a particular ANSI standard.
Testing laboratories
A number of organizations perform safety-related tests such as Underwriters Laboratories in the United States and the Canadian Standards Association in Canada.
Government agencies
Many government agencies set safety standards for matters under their jurisdiction, such as the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Food and Drug Administration.