Impacts of Hazard
Hazards can have societal, economic, and environmental consequences. These include loss of life, injuries, and damage to infrastructure, businesses, and ecosystems. Natural hazards frequently target facilities and infrastructures.
Physical Impact - Impacts caused by factors or conditions within the environment that can harm your health and potentially damage properties or infrastructures. For instance, physical injuries (bone fracture, wounds, bruises), destruction and loss of critical infrastructures such as transportation, roads, bridges, power lines, and communication lines, and widespread destruction of housing and structures.
Psychological Impact - These are effects of the work environment and the way that work is organized that are associated with mental disorders and/or physical injury or illness. For example, grief and psychological illness, marital conflict, depression as a result of the loss of loved ones and property, chronic anxiety, inadequate supervisor support, or high job demands.
Socio-cultural Impact - Sociocultural impacts influence people's feelings, values, beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and interactions. For example, population displacement, loss of cultural identity, forced adoption of new cultural sets, and ethnic conflicts.
Economic Impact - The economic impact of disasters varies. Housing, schools, factories and equipment, roads, dams, and bridges are among the capital assets and infrastructure lost. Human capital has been depleted as a result of the loss of life, the loss of skilled workers, and the destruction of education infrastructure, which has caused schooling to be disrupted. Another example is job loss due to displacement, harvest, and livestock losses in farms, fish cages, and other food sources, as well as losses in money and other valuables
Environmental Impact - The effects of hazards on the environment include physical system damage or destruction, particularly of ecosystems. For example, loss of forest due to forest fires; loss of freshwater due to salinization; biodiversity loss; and loss of natural rivers
Biological Impact - these are natural scenarios involving widespread disease, disability, or death among humans, animals, and plants as a result of microorganisms such as bacteria, viruses, or toxins. For example, an epidemic of humans, flora, and fauna, or a chronic and permanent illness caused by biological agents, virus disease spread.
Identification of Hazards and Risk Assessment
Hazard Identification - The process of identifying all physical and nonphysical agents in a workplace or specific environment is known as hazard identification. The majority of occupational health and safety issues stem from hazards that are not eliminated or managed. Hazard elimination or control is critical for preventing untoward incidents in the workplace or community. Where hazards cannot be eliminated, they must at the very least be monitored and managed properly.
Risk Assessment - Risk assessment is a method of determining which hazards and risks should be prioritized based on the likelihood and severity of impact.
Steps in Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment
1. Identify the hazards.
a. Observation - use your senses of sight, hearing, smell, and touch - combined with knowledge and experience.
b. Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDSs) - obtain them from manufacturers and suppliers. It gives information on possible harm from hazardous substances
and precautions that need to be taken.
c. Hazard and risk surveys - interview other people about their safety concerns as far as the workplace is concerned. Utmost consideration should be given to children or visitors who could be at risk.
d. Discussion groups - are useful for identifying hazards and recommending solutions.
e. Safety audits – a committee must be assigned to periodically check safety in the area.
2. Assess the Risk.
Once a hazard has been identified, the likelihood and potential severity of injury or harm must be assessed before making a decision.
The most effective way to reduce risk is to address high-risk hazards more quickly than low-risk hazards.
3. Make the changes.
Once the risks have been assessed, the next step is to make the necessary changes. These modifications include removing the hazard and replacing it with something less hazardous, engineering modifications such as the installation of exhausts, safety barriers, safety exits, procedure modifications, and so on. It is also possible to combine the risk control measures mentioned above to effectively reduce exposure to hazards.
4. Checking the changes made
To ensure that risk has been reduced and that no new hazards have arisen, the new safety measures may need to be thoroughly tested before work resumes. Making changes is not the end of risk assessment. It is critical that these changes are monitored and verified. It must be monitored to see if the changes implemented are being implemented consistently and if these changes contribute to the improvement of workplace safety management. This final step must be completed regularly to accurately assess the overall effectiveness of the process.
