safety
safety, those activities that seek either to minimize or to eliminate hazardous conditions that can cause bodily injury. Safety precautions fall under two principal headings, occupational safety and public safety. Occupational safety is concerned with risks encountered in areas where people work: offices, manufacturing plants, farms, construction sites, and commercial and retail facilities. Public safety involves hazards met in the home, in travel and recreation, and other situations not falling within the scope of occupational safety.
Safety was not considered to be a matter of public concern in ancient times, when accidents were regarded as inevitable or as the will of the gods. Modern notions of safety developed only in the 19th century as an outgrowth of the Industrial Revolution, when a terrible toll of factory accidents aroused humanitarian concern for their prevention. Today the concern for safety is worldwide and is the province of numerous governmental and private agencies at the local, national, and international levels.
The frequency and severity rates of accidents vary from country to country and from industry to industry. In the industrialized nations of the world, accidents now cause more deaths than all infectious diseases and more than any single illness except those related to heart disease and cancer. Accidents in the home, in public and private transportation, and on farms and in factories are by far the predominant cause of death in the population under 35 years of age in industrialized nations. In the United States each year, about six times as many persons receive nonfatal injuries in accidents in the home as in motor-vehicle accidents, and about twice as many at home as in industrial accidents. On a worldwide basis, motor-vehicle accidents tend to be the primary cause of accidental deaths, followed by those in industry and in the home.
Industrial accidents can occur because of improper contact with machinery, the lifting or other handling of bulk materials, and contact with electrical, chemical, or radiation hazards. The mining and lumbering industries are among those that have the highest rate of severe accidents. High-technology industries such as electronics have relatively low accident rates.
Several international organizations provide means by which national safety organizations can exchange information and pass on new ideas. Among the bodies serving in this capacity are the International Social Security Association (ISSA) and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). These two bodies have sponsored international safety congresses every three years since 1955. Every four years a congress is held by the Permanent International Association of Road Congresses, a body that is maintained by the transport ministries of its member countries and by groups representing the highway-construction industry. The World Touring and Automobile Organization (OTA) holds a safety congress every other year.
A number of organizations, including the ILO, ISSA, the World Health Organization, and the European Economic Community, maintain a joint information bureau in Geneva. The International Organization for Standardization, which is also based in Geneva, helps establish safety codes and standards for numerous areas of activity (such as nuclear energy) among the many nations that sponsor it.
National-level safety organizations tend to deal with safety questions most closely associated with the economic structure of the country concerned. Nations having limited industrial development tend to concentrate on road safety, for example. At the local level many groups exist that specialize in one aspect or another of safety. Much of their activity is conducted by professionals whose jobs relate closely to questions of safety, among them policemen, firemen, medical officers, and others concerned with health and with accident prevention. These groups seek to enlist the cooperation of educators, local governments and officials, industrial associations, and trade unions and to effect liaison with professional safety groups such as the American Society of Safety Engineers in the United States or the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health in the United Kingdom. In the United States, local safety councils may be accredited to the National Safety Council, the world’s largest safety body. In the United Kingdom the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents performs a role comparable to that of the National Safety Council.
Among the chief activities of individuals and organizations concerned with safety are the collection of statistics on accidents and injuries and the publication of analyses of those statistics; the study of hazardous situations and environments and the development of safer designs, procedures, and materials; the development of educational programs for employers, workers, drivers, and other groups at risk; and the design, through safety engineering, of machines, workplaces, and safety equipment that minimize the risk of injury. In recent years much activity has centred on identifying and preventing risks posed by such hazards as ionizing radiation and a wide array of chemicals and hazardous industrial wastes. The greatest challenge in the field of safety is to keep legislation and public awareness in step with the rapid development of technology and with the fresh hazards that it constantly presents.