The Hierarchy of Safety Controls

There is a hierarchy of safety controls that is used in business and in engineering projects, for keeping people safe from hazards. The hierarchy from most effective to least effective controls is:

1.    Elimination – by physically removing the hazard, such as shutting down the electrical power, before carrying out construction work, on an electrified railway

2.    Substitution - by replacing the hazard with something less hazardous, such as changing a work method

3.    Isolation – by isolating the hazard from the people, such as providing insulating sheaths around electrical wiring

4.    Engineering Controls – by isolating the people from the hazard, such as plant operating zones around earthmoving equipment and vehicles on a construction site; or strengthening the resistance to the hazard, by strengthening buildings to resist earthquakes and cyclones

5.    Administrative Controls – by changing the way people behave in relation to the hazard, such as limiting the duration/working hours for any work activity

6.    Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) – by protecting people from the hazard, with protective clothing, boots, eyewear, ear-protection and gloves

A few decades ago, people seldom talked about such a hierarchy. It was only after the Workplace Health and Safety Act in Australia, made directors of companies personally liable for safety breaches in workplaces, with penalties of prison-time, that businesses began to take safety seriously.

With the world’s responses to coronavirus, the first thought of many people and leaders has been cognitive dissonance or denial; “it’s just a hoax”. Or worse, some people have been persecuted for speaking out about the hazards of coronavirus. None of the controls were initially contemplated, as there was outright denial by some politicians and leaders in communities.

Today, nearly 2 years since the initial outbreaks of the virus in humans, virtually nobody is interested in the most effective control, elimination. Infact it is too late for elimination or isolation per se, as this current virus is already in the human population. Most of the efforts that nations and state governments have employed have been a combination of the two least effective controls, of closing borders, hotel quarantine, lockdowns and face masks, and an engineering control of vaccines.

Sadly, there seems to be no appetite for the most effective control of elimination or isolation; to prevent the next virus from transferring from animals to humans. On the contrary with intense factory farming, keeping various animals in dense populations, increased use of antibiotics to fatten animals faster for slaughter, we are directly encouraging the opposite of elimination, by encouraging the evolution of new viruses and superbugs immune to antibiotics.

There is little appetite for substitution, such as a plant based diet, or the ceasing of commercial factory farming of animals.

So we are betting everything on the 3 least effective controls, with vaccines being the most effective of these 3.

With climate change hazards, a sizeable percentage of the world's population is still at the cognitive dissonance stage, not interested in the two most effective controls of elimination or substitution.