HEALTH, SAFETY AND SECURITY

Health, Safety and Security

Health, Safety and Security

Introduction

Safety is the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational, or other types or consequences of failure. The term safety is very often used, and according to the Webster's New World Dictionary, the definition can be given as follows: “ The quality or condition of being safe; freedom from danger, injury, or damage; security”. Effective safety and health management is the knowledge of how to identify and control hazards and the making of key decisions to promote safety (Yaman, 2008, 210).

Discussion and Analysis

Safety is generally understood as inhibiting a significant impact on risk of injury or damage to property. A hazard is anything that has the potential to cause harm. Hazards can affect people, property, and processes. For example, occupational risk refers to the likelihood of an injury or an illness due to the exposure to a hazard. A systematic application of policies, procedures and practices to establish risk approach. It is the process of measuring and assessing the risk and the development of strategies to manage it. Strategies are transferring the risk, avoiding the risk, reducing the effect of the risk, and accepting some consequences of a risk (Yaman, 2008, 210).

Risk Assessment

The main aim of risk assessment is to protect people's health and safety. Risk assessment helps to minimize the possibility of individuals being harmed due to any activities. For example, in business and industry, all employers need to carry out regular risk assessments. Risk assessment can be performed as follows:

Collecting information: location of workplace, properties of workers, work equipment, materials used, tasks performed by employees, hazards already identified, risks of already-existing hazards, prevalance accidents, legal conditions, technical data of the equipment, work manuals, measurements of hazardous and strenuous factors at the workplace, ...