What is acceptable risk

1
What is acceptable risk?

• Gun owners in the US 80,000,000

• Accidental deaths from guns 1,500
• Death rate 0.0000188

• Doctors in the US 700,000

• Accidental deaths by doctors 120,000
• Death rate 0.171

2
Evaluating Risk

• Hazards are evaluated in terms of the likelihood
  that a problem may occur and the damage it would
  cause if the event occurred.
• Some hazards are more likely to occur than
  others.
• Some hazards are more likely to cause damage than
  others.
• How do you plan for this?

3
Evaluating Risk

• Evaluate the risk from various perspectives.
• Who would be involved in the risk
• Injury to others
• Exposures to others
• Damage to the facility or laboratory
• Disruption of research or business
• Emergency response
• Resources available

4
Evaluating Risk

• Define the possible hazards that exist.
• Radioactive materials
• Chemicals
• Exposures
• Contamination
• Injuries
• Loss of experiment
• General laboratory hazards

5
Probability versus Severity

• For each hazard identified a judgment needs to be
  made about the probability if the event occurred
• High
• Medium
• Small

• For each hazard identified a judgment needs to be
  made about the severity if the event occurred
• High
• Medium
• Small

6
Analysis
Probability
High
Medium
Low
High
Medium
Low
Severity
7
What to do with the Results

• The High-High risks of Probability and Severity
  would be the first consideration for training,
  mitigation and response preparation activities.
• Any time that the situation changes then the
  assessment should be reviewed and evaluated
  again.