disaster
riskcrisis MANAGE RISK
4.5 Risk and hazard The HSE note that the terms risk and hazard are used interchangeably in everyday vocabulary (HSE, 2001: 5). Nevertheless, it is important to make a conceptual distinction between a ‘risk’ and a ‘hazard’. In this regard, a hazard is something that has the potential for harm arising from an intrinsic property or disposition of something to cause detriment. Risk, on the other hand, is the chance that someone or something that is valued will be adversely affected in a stipulated way by the hazard (HSE, 2001: 5-6). It is the combination of the severity of harm with the likelihood of ít happening. The Health and Safety Executive comment that:
in the first place, using less of it or a safer substance, or if there is no alternative to storing the substance, using better means of storing it. (HSE, 2001: 6) Conceptually therefore, the HSE regard anything presenting the ‘possibility of danger’ as a ‘hazard’. However, since in any given workplace there would be a large number of hazards that duty holders could address, requiring duty holders formally to address them all would be excessive. Therefore to avoid unnecessary burdens on duty-holders, the HSE will not expect them to take account of hazards other than those that are a reasonably foreseeable cause of harm, taking account of reasonably foreseeable events and behaviour. Whether a reasonably foreseeable, but unlikely event – such as an earthquake – should be considered depends on the consequences for health and safety of such an event (HSE, 2001: 6).
4.6 Hazard identification and risk assessment An important factor in successful management of any sort is knowing exactly what problems you are facing and what your obligations are. One of the major changes in H&S management in the last couple of decades has been the move away from fixed, specific regulation. Under the old regime, regulations prohibited certain actions, and made others mandatory. Anything not specifically regulated was allowed, the concept in effect was: ‘permitted unless identified as dangerous’. Provided all the rules had been complied with, liability for anything which stemmed from an unregulated cause was limited.
EMERGENCY
MSC IN EMERGENCY PLANNING MANAGEMENT
It is often possible to regard any hazard as having more remote causes which themselves represent the ‘true hazard’. For example, when considering the risk of explosion from the storage of a flammable substance, it can be argued that it is not the storage per se which is the hazard but the intrinsic properties of the substance stored. Nevertheless, it makes sense to consider the storage as the basis for the estimation of risk since this approach will be the most productive one in identifying the practical control measures necessary for managing the risks, such as not storing the substance
PLANN NG
DISASTER
In recent years this has been replaced by a more general ‘duty of care’ and the requirement for a risk assessment, carried out by a competent person, which has been íncorporated into UK law from EC directives. This duty places the onus on the responsible person to identify and evaluate hazards and control risks. The concept now is that potentially hazardous activities are ‘not permitted unless proved safe’. Much of the work relates to providing evidence in the form of risk
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