Electric Safety

Electric shock of a (human) body with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles or hair. Typically, the expression is used to denote an unwanted exposure to electricity, hence the effects are considered undesirable.The minimum current a human can feel depends on the current type  and frequency. A person can feel at least 1 mA (rms) of AC at 60 Hz, while at least 5 mA for DC. The current may, if it is high enough, cause tissue damage or fibrillation which leads to cardiac arrest. 60 mA of AC (rms, 60 Hz) or 300–500 mA of DC can cause fibrillation.A sustained electric shock from AC at 120 V, 60 Hz is an especially dangerous source of ventricular fibrillation because it usually exceeds the let-go threshold, while not delivering enough initial energy to propel the person away from the source. However, the potential seriousness of the shock depends on paths through the body that the currents take. Death caused by an electric shock is called electrocution.

If the voltage is less than 200 V, then the human skin, more precisely the stratum corneum, is the main contributor to the impedance of the body in the case of a macroshoc—the passing of current between two contact points on the skin. The characteristics of the skin are non-linear however. If the voltage is above 450–600 V, then dielectric breakdown of the skin occurs. The protection offered by the skin is lowered by perspiration, and this is accelerated if electricity causes muscles to contract above the let-go threshold for a sustained period of time.

If an electrical circuit is established by electrodes introduced in the body, bypassing the skin, then the potential for lethality is much higher if a circuit through the heart is established. This is known as a microshock. Currents of only 10 A can be sufficient to cause fibrillation in this case.This is a concern in modern hospital settings when the patient is connected to multiple devices.

Why safety is Important?

So what can safety do for you?

The benefits of maintaining a safe work environment are many, but first and foremost, safety is about what you can do to protect your workers. “It’s the right thing to do. Employers should send their workers home in the same condition they came in. Why wouldn’t that be important to a company?” says Todd Detro, vice president of Safety Management Group’s owner services team.

But the practice of safety also brings financial benefits to the table. A safe work environment impacts a project’s bottom line both directly and indirectly. Costs associated with incidents, including lost costs, worker’s comp claims, insurance costs and legal fees are minimized in a safe work environment. So are the indirect costs that follow incidents, including the lost productivity that occurs when people turn their attention to dealing with an incident. “If you’re doing safety effectively in a business world, it’s going to relate to fewer schedule interruptions, which will minimize your costs,” says Mark Steinhofer, facilities lead safety advisor in Safety Management Group’s owner services team. “You’re not going to have to stop work because you run into a problem.”

On the flip side, a safe work environment boosts employee morale, which, in turn, increases productivity, efficiency and profit margins. “When people feel like they have a good, safe work environment, they feel like they can make a difference,” says Steinhofer. “There are fewer staff absences, less staff turnover and an improved quality of work.”

No one can argue with the fact that workplace safety is important, yet it’s often unintentionally overlooked, leaving workers and others on the job site exposed to risk. Safety Management Group’s trained safety advisors can identify unsafe acts and conditions and provide practical solutions for minimizing those risks. Additionally, Safety Management Group’s safety professionals can help clients to develop a culture of safety on their job sites. The on- or off-site training that Safety Management Group provides can equip all the members of a construction team with the tools they need to perform their job safely, whether they need basic safety training or project-specific safety training. “Everyone has a piece in the safety puzzle,” says Detro. “We want every person on that construction team to know what their roles are regarding safety—the project manager, the foreman, the superintendent, and the field worker all have a responsibility. We lay that out up front.”

Security

Security is the degree of protection against danger, damage, loss, and crime. Security as a form of protection are structures and processes that provide or improve security as a condition. The Institute for Security and Open Methodologies (ISECOM) in the OSSTMM 3 defines security as "a form of protection where a separation is created between the assets and the threat". This includes but is not limited to the elimination of either the asset or the threat. Security as a national condition was defined in a United Nations study (1986) so that countries can develop and progress safely.

Security has to be compared to related concepts: safety, continuity, reliability. The key difference between security and reliability is that security must take into account the actions of people attempting to cause destruction.
Different scenarios also give rise to the context in which security is maintained:

• With respect to classified matter, the condition that prevents unauthorized persons from having access to official information that is safeguarded in the interests of national security.
• Measures taken by a military unit, an activity or installation to protect itself against all acts designed to, or which may, impair its effectiveness.

   Categorising security

  There is an immense literature on the analysis and categorisation of security. Part of the reason for this is that, in most security systems, the "weakest link in the chain" is the most important. The situation is asymmetric since the 'defender' must cover all points of attack while the attacker need only identify a single weak point upon which to concentrate.
  

   Types of security

  IT realm Application security Computing security Data security Information security Network security

  Physical realm Airport security Port security/Supply chain security Food security Home security Physical security School security Shopping centre security Infrastructure security

  Political Homeland security Human security International security National security Public security Monetary Financial security

• Aviation security is a combination of material and human resources and measures intended to counter unlawful interference with aviation.

• Operations Security (OPSEC) is a complement to other "traditional" security measures that evaluates the organization from an adversarial perspective.Security management in organizations In the corporate world, various aspects of security were historically addressed separately - notably by distinct and often noncommunicating departments for IT security, physical security, and fraud prevention. Today there is a greater recognition of the interconnected nature of security requirements, an approach variously known as holistic security, "all hazards" management, and other terms.
  Inciting factors in the convergence of security disciplines include the development of digital video surveillance technologies (see Professional video over IP) and the digitization and networking of physical control systems (see SCADA). Greater interdisciplinary cooperation is further evidenced by the February 2005 creation of the Alliance for Enterprise Security Risk Management, a joint venture including leading associations in security (ASIS), information security (ISSA, the Information Systems Security Association), and IT audit (ISACA, the Information Systems Audit and Control Association).
  In 2007 the International Organisation for Standardization (ISO) released ISO 28000 - Security Management Systems for the supply chain. Although the title supply chain is included, this Standard specifies the requirements for a security management system, including those aspects critical to security assurance for any organisation or enterprise wishing to management the security of the organisation and its activities. ISO 28000 is the foremost risk based security system and is suitable for managing both public and private regulatory security, customs and industry based security schemes and requirements.

Drinking Water Safety

The most efficient way to transport and deliver potable water is through pipes. Plumbing can require significant capital investment. Some systems suffer high operating costs. The cost to replace the deteriorating water and sanitation infrastructure of industrialized countries may be as high as $200 billion a year. Leakage of untreated and treated water from pipes reduces access to water. Leakage rates of 50% are not uncommon in urban systems.Because of the high initial investments, many less wealthy nations cannot afford to develop or sustain appropriate infrastructure, and as a consequence people in these areas may spend a correspondingly higher fraction of their income on water 2003 statistics from El Salvador, for example, indicate that the poorest 20% of households spend more than 10% of their total income on water. In the United Kingdom authorities define spending of more than 3% of one's income on water as a hardship.The Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water between 1990 and 2015 will probably be reached. Some countries though still face enormous challenges.Rural communities are the furthest from meeting the 2015 MDGs drinking water target. Globally only 27% of the rural population has water piped directly to their home and 24% rely on unimproved sources. Of the 884 million people without access to an improved water source, 746 million people (84%) live in rural areas. Sub-Saharan Africa has made the least progress in improved water sources since 1990, improving only 9% to 2006. In contrast, the Eastern Asian region saw a dramatic drop from 45% to 9% reliance on unimproved water in the same time period.

Percentage of population with access to safe drinking water (2000) ^[19]

Country	%		Country	%		Country	%		Country	%		Country	%
Albania	97		Algeria	89		Azerbaijan	78		Brazil	87		Chile	93
China	75		Cuba	91		Egypt	97		India	84		Indonesia	78
Iran	92		Iraq	85		Kenya	57		North Korea	100		South Korea	92
Mexico	88		Moldova	92		Morocco	80		Mozambique	57		Pakistan	90
Peru	80		Philippines	86		Singapore	100		South Africa	86		Sudan	67
Syria	80		Turkey	82		Uganda	52		Venezuela	83		Zimbabwe	83
Note: All industrialized countries  with data available are at 100%.

In the U.S, the typical nonconserving single family home uses 69.3 gallons of water per capita per day. In some parts of the country there are water supplies that are dangerously low due to drought, particularly in the West and the South East region of the U.S.

Food Safety

Food safety  is a scientific discipline describing handling, preparation, and storage of food in ways that prevent foodborne illness. This includes a number of routines that should be followed to avoid potentially severe health hazards. Food can transmit diseases from person to person as well as serve as a growth medium for bacteria that can cause food poisoning. Debates on genetic food safety include such issues as impact of genetically modified food  on health of further generations and genetic pollution of environment, which can destroy natural biological diversity. In developed countries there are intricate standards for food preparation, whereas in lesser developed the main issue is simply the availability of adequate safe water, which is usually a critical item. In theory food poisoning is 100% preventable.

In 2001, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) started the development of an auditable food standard building on HACCP’s role in food safety management systems in the food industry.


This resulted in the ISO 22000 standard, which defines food safety management system requirements for companies that need to meet and exceed global food safety regulations. It speeds and simplifies processes without compromising other quality management systems or safety management systems. It can be used by all organizations in the supply chain, from farming to food services, to processing, transportation and storage, through to packaging and retail.

ISO 22000 creates a harmonized food safety standard that is accepted worldwide. By integrating multiple principals, methodologies and applications, ISO 22000 is easier to understand, apply and recognize. That makes it more efficient and effective as an entry-to-market tool than previous combinations of national standards.


*If you are required to have your management systems certified against a multiple international safety or quality standard, you can combine the parallel requirements with ISO 22000 and cover them cost effectively with a single food audit.

Fire Safety

Fire safety refers to precautions that are taken to prevent or reduce the likelihood of a fir that may result in death, injury, or property damage, alert those in a structure to the presence of a fire in the event one occurs, better enable those threatened by a fire to survive, or to reduce the damage caused by a fire. Fire safety measures include those that are planned during the constructionof a building or implemented in structures that are already standing, and those that are taught to occupants of the building.

Threats to fire safety are referred to as fire hazards. A fire hazard may include a situation that increases the likelihood a fire may start or may impede escape n the event a fire occurs.

Fire safety is often a component of building safe. Those who inspect buildings for violations of the Fire Code and go into schools to educate children on Fire Safety topics are fire department members known as fire prevention officers. The Chief Fire Prevention Officer or Chief of Fire Prevention will normally train newcomers to the Fire Prevention Division and may also conduct inspections or make presentations.

Explosives Safety

Explosives safety originated as a formal program in the US in the aftermath of World War I when several ammunition storage areas were destroyed in a series of mishaps. The most serious occurred at Lake Denmark Naval Ammunition Storage Depot, New Jersey, in July, 1926 when an electrical storm led to fires that caused explosions and widespread destruction. The severe property damage and 19 fatalities led Congress to empower a board of Army and Naval officers to investigate the Lake Denmark disaster and determine if similar conditions existed at other ammunition depots. The board reported in its findings that this mishap could recur, prompting Congress to establish a permanent board of colonels to develop explosives safety standards and ensure compliance beginning in 1928. This organization evolved into the Department of Defense Explosives Safety Board (DDESB) and is chartered in Title 10 of the US Code. Today, the DDESB authors DOD Manual 6055.9, Ammunition and Explosives Safety Standards. It also evaluates scientific data which may adjust those standards, reviews and approves all explosives site plans for new construction, and conducts worldwide visits to locations containing US title munitions.