About Safety Science
What is Safety Science?
Safety Science is a twenty-first century term for everything that goes into the prevention of accidents, illnesses, fires, explosions and other events which harm people, property and the environment.
Illnesses caused by exposing people to harmful biological, physical and chemical agents produce great losses each year and accurate estimates of their impact are hard to make.
In addition, pollution of various kinds causes damage to all forms of life. This generates skyrocketing cleanup costs and threatens the future habitability of our planet.
The Safety Profession
The primary focus for the safety profession is prevention of harm to people, property and the environment.
Safety professionals apply principles drawn from such disciplines as engineering, education, psychology, physiology, enforcement, hygiene, health, physics and management.
They use appropriate methods and techniques of loss prevention and loss control. Safety professionals are people who use a wide variety of management, engineering and scientific skills to prevent human suffering and related losses.
Safety professionals must know the most cost-effective ways to reduce risks and be able to provide appropriate advice to employees, owners, and managers.
By applying safety science, all of these activities can be effectively carried out. Without safety science, it is possible that managements rely on guesswork, mythology and superstition in their attempts to ensure safety at the workplace.
Safety Science Application Areas
The things that can cause or contribute to accidents, illnesses, fire and explosions and similar undesired events are called hazards.
Safety science gives people the ability to identify, evaluate and control or prevent these hazards. Safety science provides management methods for setting policy and securing funds to operate safety activities in a company.
Hazard control activities go on every day throughout the world. From the careful design and operation of nuclear power generating stations to the elimination of lead-based paints in homes, the efforts to reduce threats to public safety go on nonstop.
The application of safety science principles occurs in many places. A few of them are mentioned below:
- Office Workspaces
- All modes of transportation
- Laboratories
- Schools
- Hospitals
- Construction sites
- Oil drilling rigs at sea
- Underground mines
- Metro cities
- Space program
Where Safety Professionals works
No matter where people work, travel, live or play, conditions exist that can result in personal injury or illness.
And wherever the probability of personal injury or illness is high, the requirement of dedicated safety professionals is also high, to ensure human suffering and related losses.
Since safety professionals provide technical assistance in identifying, evaluating and controlling hazards, they work virtually anywhere where people might be exposed to hazards.
It stands to reason therefore, that positions for safety professionals are abundant in India as well as all over the world.
No matter what a company's business is the possibility of its employees encountering some type of hazard, either at work, commuting to work or at home cannot be ruled out.
Even working at a computer terminal can be hazardous, producing long-term injuries to the hand and wrist, back or other parts of the body.
The business could be manufacturing, mining, transportation, agriculture, chemicals, fuels production, construction or provision of services, it will always face hazards in some or all of its operations.
Safety professionals may specialize in:
- Occupational safety
- Ergonomics
- Industrial hygiene
- Environmental safety
- Consulting
- Contracting
- Industrial/government sector
- Fire protection engineer
- System safety
- Risk management
- Loss control, loss prevention
- Risk control
- Chemical process safety
- Construction safety
- Institutional safety
- Safety research and
- Risk assessment (Insurance Industry)