Difference Between Hazard and Risk

Once if you get an urge to know the difference between “Hazard” and “Risk”, “Your career on health and safety is already started”.

It’s meaningless to boost without proper justification:

Before the commencement of in depth knowledge about hazard and risk, Let us know the definition well.

What is meant by Hazard?

Hazard is material/behavior/ circumstances that has the potential to cause harm / sick/injury to people / environment/property

Every workplace has its own health and safety hazards, in which few are identified easily and rectified ,whereas others are supposed to be managed somehow in effective way. Mostly the hazards at workplace are not active or with low potential of bursting. But the employers are supposed to do precautious actions to handle the hazard as any hazard can cause severe emergency situations

what is hazard and risk?

A hazard is a major factor which cause terrible harm to person and properties at workplace. The words “hazard” and “risk ” are misunderstood often , both the terms are entirely different.

Hazard is an agent that could cause any damage to person/assets/ surroundings . Risk is the probability of exposure to hazard which may cause any sort of negative impacts. Or in other words a hazard has no risk unless it has no exposure. Any hazard can be potential only with the probability of exposure and causing harm. Any incident that cause interaction with hazard is an incident.

The level of undesirable impact of incident is related with hazard included with the probability of happening , form the relevant risk

In case there is no way of hazard contributing for an incident there will be no risk

Do you think that memorizing the definitions will make you to succeed in this platform?

Certainly not expect examination point of view.

The concept behind Hazard identification and risk assessment follows:

Anything object, activity, process, which has the ability to induce,

Injuries to someone.

Damage of equipment/Machines.

Environmental damage, also be consider as hazard.

Following are some Hazard identification examples

Sharp material may harm someone by puncturing.

Plastics, anenvironmental pollutant.

Improperly or badly protected electric panel may damage the insulation and the cause of mal function of electrical apparatus,those should be considered as a hazard.

So, what’s risk?

As examined above, the risk is the Combo of, Chance of injuries, damage, ruin, pollution to occur and the potential severity if it does

Conclusion will be,

Every single hazard has its level of risk associated.

Risk is the possibility for hazard, tend to harm the level of harm that can occur.

According to working atmosphere, the level of risk varies. It may be explained with the following example

As already given example the sharp objects should be considered as a hazard, but the level of risk depends on the case that exist

sharp material in the mid of walk way where the people interference is more

Sharp material in a corner, where no one to interfere.

Corrosive & protruding sharp materials into a walkway.

Sharp material which has no corrosion and it is at surface level.

Sharp material in the child care home.

sharp material in the waste bin

As the Hazard is the same i.e. Sharp material, but the level of risk (possible cause of harm & the potential severity) varies to the circumstance.

For clarity:

The sharp material in mid of walk way has higher risk than the sharp material in the corner, because there is possibility of getting harm is high.

The corroded sharp material has higher risk when compared to the sharp material which is not corrosive, as there is increased severity due to infection.