After just a short time reviewing the body of literature on occupational safety and health, one will find the terms hazard and risk are frequently and erroneously used interchangeably. In many instances, the context in which the particular term is used will permit the reader to understand what the writer actually meant, and the lack of precision in language is of no consequence. However, it is important for safety professionals to make distinctions in terminology as they develop a systematic approach to managing hazards in the workplace, and certainly when teaching the next generation of safety professionals. The terms hazard and risk are indeed distinct and a clear definition of both is warranted at the outset of this book.
Hazard
A hazard is best defined as an object, condition, substance, process, action, or behavior that is a source of potential harm.
In the occupational safety and health (OSH) context, a hazard is essentially anything that has the potential to cause a worker to sustain an injury or illness without respect to the severity or character of the injury/illness, or the likelihood the injury/illness will occur. Commonly, the term hazard follows another word or is coupled with a phrase, for instance, laceration hazard, fall hazard, repetitive trauma hazard. This coupling of terms helps specify either a source of harm or the anticipated injury associated with the source. For instance, the term fall hazard may be used when evaluating a work platform in a manufacturing facility that lacks a proper handrail. The unguarded platform has the potential to lead to a fall. Should the worker fall, she or he may experience a variety of injuries, or if lucky, no injury at all. One may say the fall (or the sudden stop) is the source of injury; however, it is the unguarded platform that is the source of the fall, and thus âfall hazardâ is still appropriate. Conversely, the general public, mass media, and sadly many within the safety profession too often use the term safety hazard when they simply mean a hazard or a particular source of a particular harm. In some respects, safety hazard, as it is commonly used, is an oxymoron because the term safety is defined as the freedom or absence of harm, and anything that would lead to the freedom of harm is actually desirable.
This book is largely focused on physical hazards. To describe a physical hazard, it may be instructive to first explain what a physical hazard is not. Physical hazards are in a large, distinct category of workplace hazards primarily involving sources of harm that exclude biological agents or chemicals. Biological and chemical exposures in the workplace present unique challenges, and quite often require the specialized work of an industrial hygienist to properly identify and assess their presence. Examples of biological agents may include mold, bacteria, viruses, and so on. Chemical hazards affect the body in a variety of routes of entry: inhalation, absorption, ingestion, and injection. Each route of entry requires a unique scientific or medical monitoring method to evaluate worker exposure to the chemical.
Many authorities would describe physical hazards as those hazards that can cause injury without necessarily coming in contact with the body. Important to remember is the word necessarily, as there are many physical hazards, such as handling or coming in contact with sharp surfaces, that can cause the body harm (i.e., a laceration). While many physical hazards produce more acute injuries such as lacerations, amputations, and strains/sprains, there are physical hazards that produce more latent injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome, hearing loss, and so on. Physical hazards more broadly include sources of harm such as electricity, heat, vibration, noise, contact with equipment and surfaces, slips/trips/falls, and radiation, to name a few. Some common injuries associated with physical hazards include lacerations, punctures, strains/sprains, electrical shock, heat exhaustion/stroke, and repetitive trauma injuries. While some may exclude topics such as bloodborne pathogens and workplace violence from a book on physical hazards, they have been included in this book because the methods of hazard assessment and control parallel that of many physical hazards, and they are issues the vast majority of general safety practitioners must address.
Risk
Risk is an expression that quantifies (1) the probability a negative outcome will occur as a result of a hazard and (2) the potential severity or impact of the negative outcome should it occur.
In order to effectively manage hazard control efforts, one must be able to assess the potential impact a hazard presents to an organization, both before and after control efforts. In other words, once a hazard is identified, a risk assessment must be performed. This assessment involves some type of calculation (either quantitatively or qualitatively) of the degree of risk a particular hazard presents to the organization. Efforts that simply inventory workplace hazards (hazard identification) should not be confused with risk assessment. Risk assessment is a more strategic process that at least considers two variables: likelihood (or frequency) of occurrence and severity. More detailed information concerning risk assessment is provided later in this chapter in the section on assessing hazards.
Accurately defining the terms hazard and risk is not just an exercise in semantics. Being able to accurately distinguish the two is critical for those charged with developing a hazard identification and control system. One must understand the role of each, and it is an important point of distinction.
