Risk Assessment.

Definition.

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 What is a Risk?
Risk = ( the probability of a negative event
occurring)
x
(the impact of the event )
Event = damage, injury, loss, liability.
Probability = chance. This lies between 0 -1.
Impact = Outcome
Crossing the priority bus route during the day, during
the night.
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 Risk, High or Low?
Probability x Impact.
•1. Men working in a ditch 2 metres deep, after heavy
rains, ditch not shored, soil soft clay.
•2. Explosion from compressed gas cylinders in homes.
•3. Repeat severe flooding in the Greenvale area, if no
corrective works are done.
•5.Out break of fire if Men smoke in storage area for
flammable liquids.
•Class to write five more.
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 Risk defined cont’d.
Does the OSH Act define risk ?
In general:
•The term risk is used in the Safety and Health sector
when assessing potential human health threats
from exposure to elements of the environment such
as chemicals, other pollutants or disease organisms
in the environment or the environment itself
Task : Support this statement with at least four
specific examples.
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• Q: How does the OSH Act define ‘harm’?
Critical Injury:
“critical injury” means an injury that—
• (a) places life in jeopardy;
• (b) produces unconsciousness;
• (c) results in substantial loss of blood;
• (d) involves the fracture of a leg or
arm, but not a finger or toe;
cont’d
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• e) involves the amputation of a leg,
arm, hand or foot, but not a finger
or toe;
• (f) consists of burns to a major
portion of the body; or
• (g) causes the loss of sight in an eye;

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 What is a risk cont’d.
• Risk as a Safety and Health Issue:

• In the case of a chemical, risk is equal to a

person's exposure multiplied by the toxicity of
the chemical.

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 Example

• E.g. research was done on the health risk of

traffic policemen exposed to the lead in
gasoline. The data provided strong empirical
evidence for the removal of lead from
gasoline in T&T. – Professor Lincoln Hall –
UWI.

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Risk Assessment and Health.

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SOME IMPORTANT TERMS.

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 Exposure

• Exposure is a combination of the

concentration of the substance/
chemical a person is exposed to
and the length of time they are
exposed to that substance/
chemical.
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 Toxicity
• Toxicity is a measure of the degree to which
something is poisonous and is often expressed
as a dose-response relationship.
• Almost every substance is toxic at some
dosage. That is, anything in a large enough
quantity can be poisonous.

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 Example of toxicity.
• For example, an adult ingesting half a
cup (400 grams) of salt can be fatal. Even
water, if consumed in large enough
quantities, can be fatal.
• Paracetamol.
• Chemicals used in some cancer
treatments.

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 Hazard
• A hazard is the inherent ( built in) property of
a substance, materials, event, or activity that
can cause harm or damage.
• A risk can only be identified when a hazard
manifests itself.
• Hazards can be latent.
• People can be hazardous.

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 Point to note:

• The greater the exposure to a potentially

dangerous situation, the greater the
associated risk.

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 Risk Assessment
What is assessment?
• Assessment is the outcome of a study of
information .
• A risk assessment is precautionary, and serves
as a guide to what could possibly occur in
given situations. It is probability based.
• The nature and severity of a risk have to be
assessed if they are to be controlled.

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 Risk Assessment cont’d

There are three questions asked by a risk

assessment:
• What can go wrong
• What is the range of severity of adverse
consequences
• How likely would these adverse consequences
manifest themselves. { Manual}
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 Four steps of Risk Assessment.
Health And Safety.
Step 1:
Hazard Identification
• Review key research ,or make observations, to identify
any potential health problems, or physical danger, or
psychological danger that a chemical ,pollutant,
disease organism, action or occurrence can cause.
• The next stage is to consider how many people are
affected by the risk, and who they are.

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 Step 2:
Evaluate the risk;
Assessment of the consequences

•Determine the amount, duration and pattern of

vulnerability to a potential hazard.
•Determine the level of risk. – High, medium,
low.

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• An example:
• Exposure assessment tries to measure how much of
a contaminant can be absorbed by an exposed
target organism, in what form, at what rate and
how much of the absorbed amount is actually
available to produce a biological effect. Although
the same general concepts apply to other
organisms, the overwhelming majority of
applications of exposure assessment are concerned
with human health, making it an important tool in
public health
• Work on Asbestos, Nicotine.
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 Step 3:
Assess the Probabilities e.g.
Dose-Response Assessment
For biological toxins, chemicals and pollutants:
• Estimate of toxicity (i.e. how much of a chemical
or pollutant it would take to cause varying
degrees of health effects that could lead to
illnesses or death). The effects of a Scorpion sting
on a two year old as opposed to a twenty year
old.
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 Probability

• An estimate of the level of tolerance or the

rate of effect to a particular action or agent
is calculated based on body weight, mass, age
and immunity.

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 Step 4:

Risk Characterization – main properties

• Assess the risk for the chemical , pollutant or
action to cause harm, e.g. a fall can be fatal
depending on the height from which the
subject falls.
• Q. What are the risks involved in freezing
plastic water bottles? The case of dioxins.

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 Assessment of other types of
hazards e.g. natural disaster.
• Identify hazards
• Decide who can be harmed
Volunteers, aged, untrained, health problems.
Children, Senior citizens, infirmed,
Special needs persons
• How many can be harmed. Estimate.
• How persons may be harmed.

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 Appraisal of the risk is important.
• Evaluate risks
Probability of risk occurring
Severity if risk occurs
Frequency of the risk occurring
Duration of risk if it does occur
Evaluate existing controls
Legal requirements

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 Appraisal of the RISK
Issues to evaluate:
•Social
•Economic
•Technological
•Organizational
•Security.

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 Record Findings.
• The significant findings of the risk assessment
should be recorded and information on these
findings should be provided to all concerned
i.e. employees of the company, volunteer
organizations, ancillary organizations- Fire
dept. Police, Health facility .

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A crucial step that is often omitted.
Review:

•The risk assessment should be reviewed on a

timely basis as determined by the nature of the
potential hazard.

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 Example: The role of the seismic research
centre in Modelling a risk
• Earthquake simulation applies a real or
simulated vibrational input to a structure that
possesses the essential features of a real
seismic event. Earthquake simulations are
generally performed to study the effects of
earthquakes on man-made engineered
structures, or on natural features which may
present a hazard during an earthquake

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 Risk v Uncertainty
A risk is not uncertainty.
Uncertainty : Situations where the outcomes are
known, but the probability of their occurrence
are unknown. E.g. a 9.0 earthquake.
The risk assessment should reduce uncertainty.
Risk: Situations where probabilities can be
allocated based on past occurrences.

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 Risk or Uncertainty?

• Female being mugged whilst travelling alone

at night in maxi taxi along the priority bus
route from Port of Spain to Arima-

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 Another definition of Risk.

• Risk: A state of uncertainty where some of

the possibilities involve a loss, catastrophe, or
other undesirable outcome.
• What is thought to be a risk, or no risk, may
be determined by culture.

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 Potential or Latent Risk.

• Once a Potential Hazard exists, there is

potential risk, or latent risk.
• E.g. A hurricane forming in the Atlantic ocean
is a potential hazard, it may or may not strike.
The hurricane therefore poses a potential
risk. The unknown strength of the hurricane is
a latent hazard bearing latent risks.

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 Potential hazard
• Trinidad sits on a fault line that is continuously
moving, even though we do not feel all of the
movements.
• Is this a potential hazard ?
• What are some of the latent risks that may
manifest themselves, if strong movements
occur?

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 Human input

• People with social, political and economic

agenda, tend to downplay certain risks, and
emphasise others as it suits their needs,
whether these risks are potential or latent.
• Individuals also categorise risks based on their
own wants and needs.

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 Controls are needed.

• A professional code of ethics is usually

focused on risk assessment and mitigation (by
the professional on behalf of client, public,
society or life in general).

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 How cont’d.
In the workplace, incidental ( potential to
occur and may or may not happen) and
inherent ( built in) risks exist.
Incidental risks are those which may occur in
the workplace but are not a part of the core of
the operations. E.g. outbreak of fire..

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Inherent risks may be negative and may have
an effect on the successful operations of the
workplace e.g. hiring the wrong persons for a
job.
Buying the wrong PPE for an operation.
Not using PPE for an operation that requires
such use.

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 How do individuals handle risks?
• Handling of risks is dependent on experience.
• If an individual has not experienced a bad outcome, that
individual feels that the risk is rare and unlikely to occur.
e.g. A major earthquake 7 or above on the Richter scale.
Having unprotected sexual intercourse.
• Many risks are misjudged because of the uncertainty
factor involved. Breaking the red light at the traffic
signal.
.

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Many risks are misjudged because of a lack
of information about the matter
Do you think that enough is being done to reduce
the number of and types of carnage on the nation’s
roads?

An example of a lack of information for decision

making, is the generation and use of nuclear power.
Compare the number of accidents and loss of lives
due to nuclear accidents, to that which happens in
the coal mines of the world.
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 Do we have information for the
long term?
• What is the risk of infants taking the H1N1
immunization? Has the field testing given enough
data about the long term effects?
• Would the infants immune system be
compromised against future strains of the virus?
Or another virus such as the Zika virus?
• What were the results to the infants of women
who took thalidomide during pregnancy?
• Latest, the HPV vaccine for young girls.
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 Conflicting information
• Sometimes there is conflicting data upon which
decisions have to be made.
• A case in point is the use of the artificial sweetner,
saccharin. This chemical has been shown to cause
bladder cancer in rats, but the critics to the
research have suggested that the concentration of
consumption would have to be very great (
800g/day), the dose given to rats, for the sweetner
to have a deleterious effect on humans.

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 To think about

• What are the risks faced by an old aged

pensioner with a heart condition using a walk
over?

• What are the risks faced by a wheelchair

bound individual when crossing the road at a
zebra crossing?

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 Risk taking in other sectors.
• In finance, risk is the probability that an
investment's actual return will be different
than expected. This includes the possibility of
losing some or all of the original investment.
• Lotto game.
• Financial crises : plunge in oil prices.

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 An imbalance of the scale.

People tend to underestimate the costs, and risks

of planned actions, whereas they tend to
overestimate the benefits of those same actions.
Driving on the shoulder of the road!!!!!
Breaking a red light!!!!!!!!!!
Aggravated assault!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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 Who benefits?

• Such error is caused by actors taking an

"inside view," where focus is on the
constituents of the specific planned action
instead of on the actual outcomes of similar
ventures that have already been completed.

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 What to do?

• Research and Experience suggest that

decision makers "should therefore make every
effort to frame the risk assessment problem
so as to facilitate utilizing all the information
that is available"

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 Outside view

• Using information from previous ventures

similar to the one being assessed, is called
taking an "outside view".

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 Categories of Risks.
• Contractual: Associated with the failure of
contractors to deliver devices or products to
the agreed specification.
• E.g. taking shortcuts during construction.
Latent risks are involved, and potential
hazards exist which can become a danger to
life and limb. An increased risk of injury.

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 Categories of Risks.

• Economic: e.g. training, attracting and

retaining staff in the labour market. The case
of the medical profession. Are the right
persons employed to handle your life?

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 •Categories of Risks
Environmental:
• Buildings that do not comply with changing
standards.
• Disposal of garbage, toxic waste. Forres Park
dump.
• Disposal of Surplus equipment.
• Lack of compliance with changing standards
for workers in the work place.
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 Categories of Risks cont’d.
Health and Safety:
• Unsafe Buildings,
• Vehicles and equipment that are not maintained to
regulation standards
• Potential fire, noise, vibration, asbestos and other
chemical and biological hazards, not identified, or
not managed.
• Lack of enforcement of food safety and traffic
management.
• Stress.
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 Categories cont’d

• Physical:
Theft, vandalism, arson, building related risks,
Storms, floods, other related weather,
damage to vehicles, mobile plant and
equipment.

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 Categories of Risks Cont’d
Regulatory:
Change of policy by state, national or
multinational regulatory bodies such as the IMF
and the introduction of fiscal packages leading
to reduction of the public service labour force
or reduced incomes. This may lead to -rise in
unemployment- rise in crime. Decreased
mental coping capacity of a population.
.
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 Categories Cont’d
• Political:
• Change of government, cross cutting policy
decisions (e.g. Brexit and Great Britain).
• Professional: Associated with the nature of
each profession.

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 Categories of risk cont’d.
• Socio-cultural: Demographic change affects
demand for services; stakeholder expectations
change.
• Technological: Obsolescence of current
systems; cost of procuring best technology
available, opportunity arising from
technological development.

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 Conclusion

There are three questions to be answered by a

risk assessment:
• What can go wrong
• What is the range of severity of adverse
consequences
• How likely would these adverse consequences
manifest themselves. { Manual}
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 Application.
• You tube Risk assessment Hazard
Identification by Trainer Courses Limited.
List as many hazardous situations that you can
identify in the video.

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 Application Cont’d
• Define the following terms: Qualitative Risk
Assessment, Quantitative Risk assessment, Risk
Analysis.

To be submitted electronically before the next

class. Monday 28th January.
• Describe the four factors that should be
considered when making a risk assessment of a
manual handling operation.
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