[SystemSafety] Historical Questions

[SPRIGGS, John J]

The earliest reference I can find to “risk assessment” in UK legislation is the Aviation Security Act 1982<http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1982/36/contents?text=%22risk%20assessment%22#match-1>.  For more-traditional safety it is COSHH in 1988, as noted below.

Of course there may be an earlier “assessment of risk” I have missed.

EUR-LEX has a proposal document from 1976 that has “reliability and risk assessment” as a topic for research in a nuclear power context.


John

From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Inge, James Mr
Sent: 13 March 2017 18:32
To: 'Drew Rae'
Cc: 'systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de'
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Historical Questions

Drew,

I’ve a suspicion that legislation didn’t start talking about proactively identifying risks until relatively recently.

The Robens Report (1972) might be a good starting point, as it includes a fairly thorough survey of contemporary safety law.  It recognises that it is insufficient to have lots of legislation imposing design rules to counter specific hazards, and talks quite a bit about risk, but I don’t think it goes quite as far as recommending a legal obligation to identify hazards and carry out a risk assessment.  It seems to assume that the hazards involved in an undertaking are already reasonably obvious.  That said, it contains some interesting discussion about the proliferation of new chemical substances, and the need to carry out research to check that they are not injurious in normal use (para 300); how safety legislation should apply to the design of equipment (para 346); and how quantitative assessment of accident probability would be an important area for future research (para 414).  The report is available from Google Books, or there’s a PDF online at http://www.mineaccidents.com.au/uploads/robens-report-original.pdf

Although the Robens Report led to the Health & Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, with its requirements to ensure the absence of risk (so far as is reasonably practicable), the Act didn’t explicitly require risk assessments or similar.

It might also be worth a look at the background to the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 1988 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/1988/1657/contents/made), which ask for a “suitable and sufficient assessment of the risks” (implementing one of Robens’ recommendations); and Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989 on the introduction of measures to encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:31989L0391), which asks employers to “evaluate the risks to the safety and health of workers”.  The latter led to the UK’s Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992, requiring “suitable and sufficient” risk assessments for workplace safety in general.

I’d be interested to hear of earlier examples of requirements for risk assessment or hazard identification.  I know that the International System Safety Society traces its roots to 1962.  Maybe there are some earlier US sources?

Regards,

                James Inge

From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Drew Rae
Sent: 09 March 2017 05:47
To: Peter Bernard Ladkin
Cc: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de<mailto:systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de>
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Historical Questions

*Sigh*
This sort of thing was happening throughout the 19th century. There would be a major accident, followed by some sort of public morality movement. In the UK, the movements were often led by local religious leaders, who would write articles to newspapers, publish their sermons as pamphlets etc. Originally these were non-state committees or societies of learned men, but they led to the formation of inspectorates with powers to inspect, approve, and then later to investigate. It happened industry by industry, in a number of countries. Steamboats in the US was just one example - there were separate bodies for threshing machines, gunpowder (later explosives) factories, railways, locomotives (the type that drove on roads) etc.

But that’s not the question I was asking.

None of the licensing or investigation talked about risk assessment - they were all focussed on specific mechanisms for dealing with specific hazards. The only people talking about risk back then were insurance companies, and they weren’t strongly involved in accident prevention.

Today, both legislation and accident reports routinely talk about risk assessment as a practice for managing safety. That didn’t happen prior to the 19th century. I’m not certain for sure it happened prior to the 1950s. The formation of the inspectorates puts an early bound, the invention of quantitative risk assessment (as a safety practice, not an insurance calculation) puts a later bound. What I want to know is when it started happening.

Drew



On 9 Mar. 2017, at 3:27 pm, Peter Bernard Ladkin <ladkin at causalis.com<mailto:ladkin at causalis.com>> wrote:



On 2017-03-09 06:16 , Peter Bernard Ladkin wrote:

On 2017-03-09 05:59 , DREW Rae wrote:
Formal investigation for the purpose of safety, and formal regulation of safety through
Inspectorates is a 19th century invention.

Maybe, but what's your trigger? What constitutes "formal"? What constitutes "regulation"? You seem
to suggest: state involvement. So, at some point a state decides "we are going to adjudicate
accident-events formally".

According to this article, written by a historian at Colorado State Uni, it was 1838 in the US:
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2013-01-31/the-horrific-accident-that-created-the-regulatory-state<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bloomberg.com_view_articles_2013-2D01-2D31_the-2Dhorrific-2Daccident-2Dthat-2Dcreated-2Dthe-2Dregulatory-2Dstate&d=CwMFaQ&c=axaOw2qHyp7zEDNbTjpgYA&r=I50DT5uzjgwtY3e5ckW0gBFWjiiaKOeiz7-OBXSM1Qs&m=Jeh29OMYJLYxc8QmFzC-EqMvXQodRONfQi98HFO-BWI&s=n4gV_SqDxIHfRU0wQgKN3A_9W1xn7A9QnDViSWH_cew&e=>


PBL

Prof. i.R. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
MoreInCommon
Je suis Charlie
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de<http://www.rvs-bi.de>





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