Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, Canterbury 8140, New Zealand.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 May 1;18(9):4849. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18094849.
Successful implementation of Health and Safety (H&S) systems requires an effective mechanism to assess risk. Existing methods focus primarily on measuring the safety aspect; the risk of an accident is determined based on the product of severity of consequence and likelihood of the incident arising. The health component, i.e., chronic harm, is more difficult to assess. Partially, this is due to both consequences and the likelihood of health issues, which may be indeterminate. There is a need to develop a quantitative risk measurement for H&S risk management and with better representation for chronic health issues. The present paper has approached this from a different direction, by adopting a public health perspective of quality of life. We have then changed the risk assessment process to accommodate this. This was then applied to a case study. The case study showed that merely including the chronic harm scales appeared to be sufficient to elicit a more detailed consideration of hazards for chronic harm. This suggests that people are not insensitive to chronic harm hazards, but benefit from having a framework in which to communicate them. A method has been devised to harmonize safety and harm risk assessments. The result was a comprehensive risk assessment method with consideration of safety accidents and chronic health issues. This has the potential to benefit industry by making chronic harm more visible and hence more preventable.
成功实施健康与安全（H&S）系统需要一个有效的风险评估机制。现有的方法主要侧重于衡量安全方面；事故风险是根据后果严重程度和事件发生可能性的乘积来确定的。健康方面，即慢性危害，更难评估。部分原因是后果和健康问题的可能性都不确定。需要开发一种用于 H&S 风险管理的定量风险测量方法，并更好地代表慢性健康问题。本文从一个不同的角度出发，采用了生活质量的公共卫生视角。然后，我们改变了风险评估过程以适应这一点。然后将其应用于案例研究。案例研究表明，仅仅包括慢性危害量表似乎足以更详细地考虑慢性危害的危害。这表明人们并非对慢性危害危害不敏感，而是受益于有一个可以用来传达这些危害的框架。已经设计出一种方法来协调安全和危害风险评估。其结果是一种综合的风险评估方法，同时考虑了安全事故和慢性健康问题。这有可能通过使慢性危害更加明显从而更可预防，从而使工业受益。
