Understanding the relationship between Hazard, Risk, and Accidents is very important in accident prevention in the workplace.
Hazard – Risk – Accidents
What is a Hazard:
A hazard is anything, situation, or condition that has the potential to cause harm to people, equipment, and the environment.
What is Risk:
Risk is the probability that an incident will occur and the severity of the outcome. Risk is graded into low, medium, and high.
Accident:
An accident is an unexpected and unwanted occurrence that could result in injury to persons, or damage to equipment, materials, or environment.
The relationship between Hazard – Risk – Accidents is represented thus:
I will use the pictogram above to explain the relationship between Hazard – Risk – Accidents.
First, I want us to have an understanding that hazard most times is a constant; Hazard is always there.
Hence in accident prevention, what we do often is that we either eliminate the hazard if possible or block exposure.
I know some people will disagree with me when I say “Hazards are constant most times”, but I will explain why I say that.
Recall the definition of a hazard: A hazard is anything, situation, or condition that has the potential to cause harm to people, equipment, and the environment.
If you look around, there is always a thing, a situation, or a condition that could bring harm to you. For instance, a nail inside a toolbox is a hazard because it has the potential to cause injury, an overspeeding car on the road is a hazard because it has the potential to cause an accident, an uneven edge of a container is a hazard because it can cause laceration, none of these will cause accident except someone is exposed to them, but it does not mean they are not there.
Hazard is a complex term that could be analyzed from different angles. Hazard can also be defined based on STATE.
At this point, if you go back to the pictogram you will agree with me that the salient actor within the chain is EXPOSURE. Without EXPOSURE there is no risk and without EXPOSURE there can never be an accident.
This gives us more windows in accident prevention. Hence, we can prevent accidents by either eliminating the hazard if possible, eliminating the hazard state, or controlling the exposure.
Based on the pictogram, BLOCK EXPOSURE then the chain is shattered.
This is how Hazard – Risk – Accidents are related.
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