Safety

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Safety (disambiguation).

This article or section may be confusing or unclear for some readers.Please improve the article or discuss this issue on the talk page. This article has been tagged since April 2007.

Warning signs, such as this one, can improve safety awareness.
Safety is the state of being "safe" (from French sauf), the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types or consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable. This can take the form of being protected from the cause or from exposure to something that is not safe. It can include protection of people or of possessions. Safety can be in relation to some guarantee or a standard of insurance to the quality and unharmful function of an object or organization. It is used in order to ensure that the object or organization will do only what it is meant to do.
Contents[hide]
1 Risks and responses
2 System safety and reliability engineering
3 Safety measures
4 Standards organizations
4.1 American National Standards Institute
4.2 Testing laboratories
4.3 Government agencies
5 See also
//

[edit] Risks and responses
Safety is generally interpreted as implying a real and significant impact on risk of death, injury or damage to property. In response to perceived risks many interventions may be proposed with engineering responses and regulation being two of the most common.
Probably the most common individual response to perceived safety issues is insurance, which compensates for or provides restitution in the case of damage or loss.

[edit] System safety and reliability engineering
System safety and reliability engineering is an engineering discipline. Continuous changes in technology, environmental regulation and public safety concerns make the analysis of complex safety-critical systems more and more demanding.
A common fallacy, for example among electrical engineers regarding structure power systems, is that safety issues can be readily deduced. In fact, safety issues have been discovered one by one, over more than a century in the case mentioned, in the work of many thousands of practitioners, and cannot be deduced by a single individual over a few decades. A knowledge of the literature, the standards and custom in a field is a critical part of safety engineering. A combination of theory and track record of practices is involved, and track record indicates some of the areas of theory that are relevant. (In the USA, persons with a state license in Professional Engineering in Electrical Engineering are expected to be competent in this regard, the foregoing notwithstanding, but most electrical engineers have no need of the license for their work.)
Safety is often seen as one of a group of related disciplines: quality, reliability, availability, maintainability and safety. (Availability is sometimes not mentioned, on the principle that it is a simple function of reliability and maintainability.) These issues tend to determine the value of any work, and deficits in any of these areas are considered to result in a cost, beyond the cost of addressing the area in the first place; good management is then expected to minimize total cost.

[edit] Safety measures
Safety measures are activities and precautions taken to improve safety, i.e. reduce risk related to human health. 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/Safety factors. For instance, a product rated to never be required to handle more than 200 pounds might be designed to fail under at least 400 pounds, a safety factor of two. Higher numbers are used in more sensitive applications such as medical or transit safety.
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.
Geological surveys to determine whether land or water sources are polluted, how firm the ground is at a potential building site, etc.

[edit] Standards organizations
A number of standards organizations exist that promulgate safety standards. These may be voluntary organizations or government agencies.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Testing laboratories
Product safety testing, for the United States, is controlled by OSHA, in accordance with the Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL), see [1].
For other countries, there are many other organizations that have accreditation to test and/or submit test reports for safety certification. These are typically referred to as a Notified or Competent Body. The most common is the IECEE Certification Body Scheme, see [2]

[edit] 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.

[edit] See also
Accident
Aircraft
Air safety
Accidents and incidents in aviation
List of aircraft accidents
Aisles: Safety and regulatory considerations
Bicycle
Bicycle safety
Boat
Boat accident
Boat safety
Car
Car accident
Car safety
Door guard
Door safety
Explosives safety
Fire safety
List of rail accidents
List of nuclear accidents
Private security
Risk management
Road safety
Sailing ship
Sailing ship accidents
Safety engineering
fail-safe
fail-secure
Poka-yoke
Software System Safety
Safety statement
Work accident
Workplace safety
Material safety data sheet
Protective clothing
Occupational health and safety
Criticality accident
[hide]
v • d • eMajor fields of technology
Applied science
Artificial intelligence • Ceramic engineering • Computing technology • Electronics • Energy • Energy storage • Engineering physics • Environmental technology • Materials science & engineering • Microtechnology • Nanotechnology • Nuclear technology • Optical engineering • Quantum computing
Sports and recreation
Camping equipment • Playground • Sport • Sports equipment
Information and communication
Communication • Graphics • Music technology • Speech recognition • Visual technology
Industry
Construction • Financial engineering • Manufacturing • Machinery • Mining
Military
Bombs • Guns and Ammunition • Military technology and equipment • Naval engineering
Domestic
Domestic appliances • Domestic technology • Educational technology • Food technology
Engineering
Aerospace • Agricultural • Architectural • Bioengineering • Biochemical • Biomedical • Chemical • Civil • Computer • Construction • Electrical • Electronic • Environmental • Industrial • Materials • Mechanical • Mechatronics • Metallurgical • Mining • Naval • Nuclear • Petroleum • Software • Structural • Systems • Textile • Tissue
Health and safety
Biomedical engineering • Bioinformatics • Biotechnology • Cheminformatics • Fire protection technology • Health technologies • Pharmaceuticals • Safety engineering • Sanitary engineering
Transport
Aerospace • Aerospace engineering • Marine engineering • Motor vehicles • Space technology • Transport
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety"
Categories: Cleanup from April 2007 Wikipedia articles needing clarification Core issues in ethics Safety