Acceptable Risk

Life is an exercise in risk assessment. We make thousands of decisions every day based on conscious or unconscious assessments of relative risk. Most of us would be far more apt to drive through a raging hurricane to get the baby to a hospital than we would to risk our lives to see a movie. Sometimes the reward for doing something dangerous (or the penalty for not doing it) is so enormous that taking great risk is the only wise decision. Risk is a part of business, too. Every investment in a piece of equipment or in a vehicle or in a slice of real estate is a well-considered roll of the dice that the costs of the purchase will be offset by increased revenue or efficiency. Entire industries are built by entrepreneurs who are willing to take huge risks. All of our national heroes, from George Washington to Neil Armstrong and beyond are household names in large measure because they were willing to risk so much. At what point does acceptable risk become unacceptable? Is there an absolute standard for too-risky? As a philosophical exercise, push laws and regulations aside. When does risk transform to danger? I propose the following as a list of absolute indicators that workplace risks are unacceptable: When management inflicts their risk tolerance on others. Hazards that managers tolerate in their yards—whether unsafe work habits or out-of-date machinery—are far more likely to cause injuries to workers than they are to the risk managers. If the bottom falls out of a company’s luck jar, the yard workers, not the managers, will bear the life-altering consequences. The guy in the corner office might have to write a few checks to lawyers and regulators, but at least he’ll have the eyes and hands to do it with. When risk tolerance is a surrogate for intellectual laziness. As an example, it is never acceptable for workers to walk on moving conveyors. Never. Under any circumstances. The fact that managers have not engineered another way to sort materials does not change the inherent danger of the practice, and does not grant dispensation for putting workers in harm’s way. If safety were a core value, those managers would cease the practice immediately. They would take walking the conveyor off the table as an option. Because work still needs to be completed, however, a solution would by definition be devised. Necessity is the mother of . . . oh, you know. By the way, that outside-the-box search for solutions would be exactly what you’d do after someone got hurt. In that case, though, the meetings would be driven by lawyers and regulators. When risk tolerance defies the laws of nature. Gravity works all the time, 24-7. The fact that a yard has run out of room to stack bales safely does not make an unsafe stack safer. When risk tolerance is a disguise for saving a buck. Where people might fall from elevation (four feet is the legal limit), some form of fall protection must be installed. Even if it’s expensive. Where there is a reasonable possibility that employees are being exposed to lead or other toxic substances, industrial hygiene monitoring must be performed. Even though it’s expensive. And if the sampling data reveals dangerous exposures, those exposures must be controlled, even if all the players are will to assume the risk of poisoning. The cost of proper hazardous waste handling cannot justify the risk of manually venting compressed gas cylinders. No degree of increased efficiency can justify the storage of fuels with oxidizers. Nor can it justify torch cutting operations in the proximity of flammable materials. The fact that a machine is seventy years old and was built when safety devices were unheard of has no bearing on the need for effective lock-out mechanisms and machine guarding. When a discussion of risk management begins with the assumption that risks cannot be managed. When answers to problems are complex or difficult to obtain, it is human nature to assume that what has always been must therefore always be. It’s a logical spiral that sidelines the search for solutions and instead grants ill-considered absolution for inflicting intolerable risks. The recycling industry thrives on a tradition of problem solving and entrepreneurism. There’s no reason why that same commitment and enthusiasm cannot be applied to safety issues big and small. We just have to want it enough.