Safety

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For other uses, see Safety (disambiguation).
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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. Safety can
also be defined to be the control of recognized hazards to achieve an acceptable level of
risk. This can take the form of being protected from the event or from exposure to
something that causes health or economical losses. It can include protection of people or
of possessions.

Contents
[hide]
 • 1 Meanings
• 2 Limitations
• 3 Types of safety
o 3.1 Normative safety
o 3.2 Substantive safety
o 3.3 Perceived safety
• 4 Risks and responses
• 5 System safety and reliability engineering
• 6 Safety measures
• 7 Standards organizations
o 7.1 United States
 7.1.1 American National Standards Institute
 7.1.2 Testing laboratories
 7.1.3 Government agencies
o 7.2 Other countries
 7.2.1 Standards institutions
 7.2.2 Testing Laboratories
• 8 See also

• 9 External links

[edit] Meanings
There are two slightly different meanings of safety. For example, home safety may
indicate a building's ability to protect against external harm events (such as weather,
home invasion, etc.), or may indicate that its internal installations (such as appliances,
stairs, etc.) are safe (not dangerous or harmful) for its inhabitants.

[edit] Limitations
Safety can be limited 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.

It is important to realize that safety is relative. Eliminating all risk, if even possible,
would be extremely difficult and very expensive. A safe situation is one where risks of
injury or property damage are low and manageable.

[edit] Types of safety

It is important to distinguish between products that meet standards, that are safe, and
those that merely feel safe. The highway safety community uses these terms:
[edit] Normative safety

Normative safety is a term used to describe products or designs that meet applicable
design standards and protection.

[edit] Substantive safety

Substantive, or objective safety means that the real-world safety history is favorable,
whether or not standards are met.

[edit] Perceived safety

Perceived, or subjective safety refers to the level of comfort of users. For example, traffic
signals are perceived as safe, yet under some circumstances, they can increase traffic
crashes at an intersection. Traffic roundabouts have a generally favorable safety record,
yet often make drivers nervous.

[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:

• Root cause analysis to identify causes of a system failure and correct

deficiencies.
• 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] United States

[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 largely controlled by the Consumer
Product Safety Commission. In addition, workplace related products come under the
jurisdiction of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), which
certifies independent testing companies as Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories
(NRTL), see [1].

[edit] Government agencies

Many government agencies set safety standards for matters under their jurisdiction, such
as:

• the Food and Drug Administration

• the Consumer Product Safety Commission
• the United States Environmental Protection Agency

[edit] Other countries

[edit] Standards institutions

• British Standards Institution

• Canadian Standards Association
• Deutsches Institut für Normung
• International Organization for Standardization

[edit] Testing Laboratories

Many countries have national 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.
[edit] See also
• Accident
• Aircraft
o Air safety
o Accidents and incidents in aviation
o List of aircraft accidents
• Aisles: Safety and regulatory considerations
• Arc Flash
• Safety in Australia
• Automobile
o Car accident
o Automobile safety
o Traffic safety
• Bicycle
o Bicycle safety
• Boat
o Boat safety
• Certified safety professional
• Child
o Child safety seat
o Toy safety
o Poison control
o Safe Kids USA
• Consumer product safety
• Door#Door-related accidents
• Electrical safety
• Explosives safety
• Fire safety
• Gun safety
• List of rail accidents
• List of nuclear accidents
• Motorcycle safety
• Patient safety
• Pedestrian safety
• Private security
• Risk management
• Road safety
• Sailing ship accidents
• Safety engineering
o Fail-safe
o Fail-secure
o Poka-yoke
o Software System Safety
• Safety statement
 • Security
• Seismic performance
• Sports injury safety
• Workplace safety
o Criticality accident
o Material safety data sheet
o Occupational safety and health
o Personal protective equipment
o Work accident

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[edit] External links

• Safety Australia
• Safety.com is a free Web 2.0 Community for Safety Citizens: Professionals and
Laypersons

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety"

Categories: Core issues in ethics | Safety
Hidden categories: Articles needing additional references from July 2010 | All articles
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