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Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment
Published in Ron C. McKinnon, The Design, Implementation, and Audit of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, 2019
When designing an SMS, an ongoing method of hazard identification and elimination must be a component of such a system. The hierarchy of hazard elimination, from the most effective to the least effective method, is as follows: Hazard elimination – physically remove the hazard.Hazard substitution – replace the hazard.Engineering controls – isolate workers from the hazard.Administrative controls – change the way the work is done.Personal protective equipment – protect the worker with personal protective equipment.
Managing workplace chemical safety
Published in Chris Winder, Neill Stacey, Occupational Toxicology, 2004
Targets or goals related to these activities might be: development of an incident reporting system and its effective use by workershazard elimination (for example, of all cancer-causing chemicals from the workplace)successful action in the improved control of all hazards identified.
Avoiding adverse autonomous agent actions
Published in Human–Computer Interaction, 2022
It is important to begin with the acknowledgment that the three identified strategies promulgated here tend to treat autonomy as the ‘problem’ to be addressed and resolved. As previously discussed, the idea of unintended consequences as universally adverse to human society is not necessarily a justified one. However, from the ‘problem’ stance, what are featured are the risks and uncertainties that can be linked to autonomy’s penetration. But, of course, this slant on things needs to be tempered with the recognition of the great advantages that intentional and successful autonomy creation is offered in prospect. Autonomous systems may well render great benefit and clearly, it is imperative to provide a considered and balanced position between benefit and risk (and see Salmon, Carden, & Hancock, 2021). It is useful to present this balance of advantage and disadvantage in relation to each of the defensive strategies that are here evaluated. At one very trite and facile level, the potential problems posed by autonomous systems are extremely simple to resolve. Simply, do not develop them. In terms of the hierarchy of controls, this approach is referred to as hazard elimination. This line of progress is one that is, of course, possible. However, it is only fair to note that the case of technologies that have been specifically banned, as opposed to unpromising lines of technological development which have been abandoned, prove to be few indeed (and see Hancock, 2009). This is not to say that Luddite perspectives have not persisted across the centuries, nor been vehemently expressed, but their widespread impact has, arguably, been negligible (and see Elliott, 2014). This assertion of constant and on-going adoption and development is especially true from a military perspective. However, it is important to note that perhaps the very few large-scale examples of banned technologies do actually derive from this military domain. In terms of energy accumulation, we might observe that the fabrication of dynamite and the refinement of U-235 are processes which create the conditions for significant energy release. Each of these processes can intentionally be abandoned but clearly, they never have been (and see Haddon, 1970; Kahn, 1962). To do so means also abandoning the advantages that these inventions render. Quarrying, for example, would be much more challenging without the facility of controlled explosives and most probably that an early abandonment of nuclear weapon developments would mean that nuclear power stations would perhaps not exist, at least in the form they do today. The case of biological and chemical weapon development is considered further below.