The importance of ethics in the safety profession - Research Paper Example

By minimizing the number of such preventable events the US has a lot to gain. It has been estimated by National Safety Council that in 2004 accidents in the United States cost more than $ 574.8 billion, losses related to fire reached to the total of $9.8 billion. Exposure of persons to dangerous physical, biological and chemical agents create major losses every year causing severe illness and it is really difficult to make precise estimate of their impact. Additionally, all kind of pollution causes harm to every single form of life which therefore generates heavy cleanup costs bullies future stability of earth.

The word “safety science” might sound latest, but many of the resources of this science are quite a number of years old. Some of the most knowledgeable areas of safety science are mentioned below and every field involves ethics that needs to be taken care of. 1. Chemistry and biology – knowledge about hazardous substances is provided by chemistry and biology. 2. Information about electricity, heat, radiation and all other kinds of energy is provided by physics. 3. The performance limits of humans and the ways in which improvements pertaining to performance and safety can be made are provided by ergonomics. 4. The knowledge about pollution, how it can be controlled and its impact is revealed by environmental sciences.

Factories create a lot of pollution and there are often some that do not dispose of their waste products properly which is against ethical standards. 5. To understand the human behavior psychology is studied and this helps in avoiding accidents. 6. Other information about safety in the society is provided by engineering, business management and sociology. Various things can cause accidents and contribute to illness and other hazardous things such as fire and explosions. The ability to identify, evaluate, and control or prevent such kinds of hazards is provided by safety science.

Moreover, it also provides with the methods to set policies and to operate the activities ensuring safety and the ethical standards. Hazard control activities are used by everyone all over the world on a daily basis and companies use designs for operation of nuclear power generating stations and is also used by homes for lead based paints to reduce any kind of threat to the public. Since the safety profession is highly important especially for the companies, its application occurs in various other places such as transportation, schools, and laboratories and on farms too in order to ensure safety so that people are not exposed to hazards.

Safety science helps in understanding about the ways in which something can become a hazard and the people must know about the harms of the hazard and the ways in which it can be eliminated. However, in the cases in which the hazard cannot be eliminated totally, there are always some ways in which the harm can be reduced. However, this involves a cost and also requires the assistance of the designers and managers. The safety professionals come up with the cost effective ways in which the risk can be reduced and they also provide with their advice to apply the safety science so that all the activities are conducted in a careful manner.

If safety science is not present, the safety profes