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Are all food ingredients, dietary supplement ingredients and even foods, required to meet the same safety standards? Are they all equally safe? If so, then why do the various categories have different expressions describing their safety, such as "reasonable certainty of no harm" for food ingredients and "reasonable expectation of no harm" for dietary supplement ingredients? The basis for these different expressions is that they are not standards of safety, but standards of proof of safety. Just as in criminal vs. civil courts, the threshold for proving guilt or fault is different, so too are there differences between various categories of consumer products regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration. This manuscript describes the threshold requirements for each standard, as well as to the identity of the decision makers on what is safe, their credentials as decision makers and the databases mandated for their use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the maritime industry's emphasis on sustainable fuels has increased, liquid hydrogen (LH2) has emerged as a promising alternative due to its high energy density and zero-emission characteristics. While the experience of using natural gas in ships can serve as a basis for the introduction of hydrogen, the different risks associated with the two fuels must also be considered. This review article provides a methodology for selecting suitable metal materials for shipboard LH2 storage and piping systems based on operational requirements. The effects of both liquid and gaseous hydrogen environments on metal materials are first comprehensively reviewed. The minimum requirements for metal materials in liquefied natural gas (LNG) storage systems, as stipulated in the IGC and IGF codes, were used as a baseline to establish minimum requirements for liquid hydrogen. The applicability of austenitic stainless steel, a representative metal material for cryogenic use, to a liquid hydrogen environment according to nickel content was examined. In order to apply liquid hydrogen to the marine environment, the minimum requirements for liquid hydrogen were organized based on the minimum requirements for metal materials in the LNG storage system covered by the IGC and IGF codes. Finally, to expand the material selection criteria for low-temperature cargo and fuel storage facilities at sea, slow strain tensile testing, fatigue life, and fracture toughness considering the hydrogen environment and cryogenic temperature were derived as evaluation items. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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System safety is a discipline of applying engineering and management principles, criteria, and techniques to achieve acceptable or tolerable risk within the constraints of operational effectiveness, suitability, time, and cost throughout all phases of the system life. System safety engineering is the program to identify hazards, and to eliminate hazards or reduce the associated risks when the hazards cannot be eliminated. System safety management involves plans and activities taken to identify hazards; assess and mitigate associated risks; track, control, close, and document risks encountered in the design, development, test, manufacturing, installation, operation and maintenance, and the disposal of systems, subsystems, and equipment. In this paper, the concept and principle of system safety in the transit system is discussed. The paper also introduces the safety standards, safety life-cycle, Safety Integrity Levels (SILs), safety analysis techniques and safety cases etc.

• We present an approach to assess the quality of the text of safety standards. • The approach is based on text quality analysis with RQA - Quality Studio. • The approach can detect issues such as imprecision, ambiguity, and inconsistency. • We also present the application of the approach to the DO-178C standard. • The application results show that the approach can be an effective means. Most safety-critical systems are subject to rigorous assurance processes to justify that the systems are dependable. These processes are typically conducted in compliance with safety standards, e.g., DO-178C for software in aerospace. This can be a prerequisite so that a system is allowed to operate. However, following these standards can be challenging in practice because of issues in their text such as imprecision, ambiguity, and inconsistency. These issues can hinder compliance, delaying it and making it more expensive, or even preventing it. As a solution, we aim to define means that aid in the identification of the issues and thus facilitate their resolution. We have developed an approach for assessment of the quality of the text of safety standards with RQA - Quality Studio, an industrial tool for requirements quality analysis with semantic technologies. The approach is based on the extraction of analysis units from a standard, on the specification and exploitation of ontologies, and on the reuse of metrics provided by RQA - Quality Studio to evaluate text quality. The approach has been applied on the DO-178C standard, assessing its text as a whole and its different main individual parts. The quality of most of the text of the standard can be regarded as high. The most frequent issues in DO-178C are the use of passive voice, of synonyms, and of imprecise modal verbs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that provides a means for a broad and detailed assessment of the quality of the text of safety standards, leading to the identification of specific aspects that could be improved in the text and indicating the extent to which quality issues affect it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aviation alters the composition of the atmosphere globally and can thus drive climate change and ozone depletion. The last major international assessment of these impacts was made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1999. Here, a comprehensive updated assessment of aviation is provided. Scientific advances since the 1999 assessment have reduced key uncertainties, sharpening the quantitative evaluation, yet the basic conclusions remain the same. The climate impact of aviation is driven by long-term impacts from CO2 emissions and shorter-term impacts from non-CO2 emissions and effects, which include the emissions of water vapour, particles and nitrogen oxides (NOx). The present-day radiative forcing from aviation (2005) is estimated to be 55 mW m−2 (excluding cirrus cloud enhancement), which represents some 3.5% (range 1.3–10%, 90% likelihood range) of current anthropogenic forcing, or 78 mW m−2 including cirrus cloud enhancement, representing 4.9% of current forcing (range 2–14%, 90% likelihood range). According to two SRES-compatible scenarios, future forcings may increase by factors of 3–4 over 2000 levels, in 2050. The effects of aviation emissions of CO2 on global mean surface temperature last for many hundreds of years (in common with other sources), whilst its non-CO2 effects on temperature last for decades. Much progress has been made in the last ten years on characterizing emissions, although major uncertainties remain over the nature of particles. Emissions of NOx result in production of ozone, a climate warming gas, and the reduction of ambient methane (a cooling effect) although the overall balance is warming, based upon current understanding. These NOx emissions from current subsonic aviation do not appear to deplete stratospheric ozone. Despite the progress made on modelling aviation's impacts on tropospheric chemistry, there remains a significant spread in model results. The knowledge of aviation's impacts on cloudiness has also improved: a limited number of studies have demonstrated an increase in cirrus cloud attributable to aviation although the magnitude varies: however, these trend analyses may be impacted by satellite artefacts. The effect of aviation particles on clouds (with and without contrails) may give rise to either a positive forcing or a negative forcing: the modelling and the underlying processes are highly uncertain, although the overall effect of contrails and enhanced cloudiness is considered to be a positive forcing and could be substantial, compared with other effects. The debate over quantification of aviation impacts has also progressed towards studying potential mitigation and the technological and atmospheric tradeoffs. Current studies are still relatively immature and more work is required to determine optimal technological development paths, which is an aspect that atmospheric science has much to contribute. In terms of alternative fuels, liquid hydrogen represents a possibility and may reduce some of aviation's impacts on climate if the fuel is produced in a carbon-neutral way: such fuel is unlikely to be utilized until a ‘hydrogen economy’ develops. The introduction of biofuels as a means of reducing CO2impacts represents a future possibility. However, even over and above land-use concerns and greenhouse gas budget issues, aviation fuels require strict adherence to safety standards and thus require extra processing compared with biofuels destined for other sectors, where the uptake of such fuel may be more beneficial in the first instance.

Background: Occupational risk management is known as a catalyst in generating superior returns for all stakeholders on a sustainable basis. A number of companies in Ghana implemented health and safety measures adopted from international companies to ensure the safety of their employees. However, there exist great threats to employees' safety in these companies. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the level of compliance of Occupational Health and Safety management systems and standards set by international and local legislation in power producing companies in Ghana. Methods: The methodology is conducted by administering questionnaires and in-depth interviews as measuring instruments. A random sampling technique was applied to 60 respondents; only 50 respondents returned their responses. The questionnaire was developed from a literature review and contained questions and items relevant to the initial research problem. A factor analysis was also carried out to investigate the influence of some variables on safety in general. Results: Results showed that the significant factors that influence the safety of employees at the hydroelectric power plant stations are: lack of training and supervision, non-observance of safe work procedures, lack of management commitment, and lack of periodical check on machine operations. The study pointed out the safety loopholes and therefore helped improve the health and safety measures of employees in the selected company by providing effective recommendations. Conclusion: The implementation of the proposed recommendations in this paper, would lead to the prevention of work-related injuries and illnesses of employees as well as property damage and incidents in hydroelectric power plants. The recommendations may equally be considered as benchmark for the Safety and Health Management System with international standards.

Objectives: Previous report shows that corneal spot size is an important influence factor on damage threshold induced by supercontinumm (SC) source. However, damage thresholds were determined for the spot size of only 0.37 mm due to the low output of the employed SC source at that time. The objectives of this study are to determine the lowest possible corneal damage threshold at a large corneal spot size using a more powerful SC source and provide data for the future possible refinements of laser safety standards., Materials and Methods: A series of experiments was conducted in the New Zealand white rabbit model to determine the corneal damage threshold induced by a 900-2000 nm SC source, with corneal 1/e beam diameter of about 1.2 mm. Slit-lamp biomicroscope was employed to reveal the corneal damage characteristics. By employing the action spectra determined through the analysis of current laser safety guidelines and standards, the effective damage threshold could be calculated., Results: The determined damage threshold given in terms of the peak radiant exposure for the exposure duration of 0.14 s was 44.3 J/cm 2 . At threshold level, corneal damages involved the epithelium and the shallower stroma. The safety factor between the effective damage threshold and the corresponding maximum permissible exposure (MPE) was about 45., Conclusions: Present corneal MPEs in the wavelength range of 700-1200 nm may be conservative and corneal damage thresholds for the infrared A wavelengths should be determined in future studies., (© 2023 Wiley Periodicals LLC.)

In June 2016, after decades of debate, the U.S. Congress enacted a major revision to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976, the U.S. regulatory law applicable to industrial chemicals. It has been theorized that Europe may seek to export its stricter environmental standards under REACH to the United States. Thus, it is interesting to examine whether the environmental, health, and safety practices – including the values – found in REACH impacted the TSCA reform debate in the U.S. We chose to focus the comparison on the following issues that were central features of REACH: responsibility to develop safety data, priorities for safety assessments, definition of the safety standard, restrictions on chemical use, and preemption of regulatory activity by lower levels of government. There are three major findings. First, the U.S. did not implement the EU's solution of putting the burden of data generation, risk assessment, and risk management on the industry. Second, REACH is more precautionary in its design than the amended TSCA. Third, the new U.S. law is generally less strict than REACH in their requirements on industry, though it is also less preemptive of lower levels of government than REACH is. Moreover, the U.S. retains a common law approach to chemical-induced injury that is more punitive of industrial errors than is European Union law. The EU's attempt to export REACH regulation failed in the case of U.S.A., as the U.S. Congress did not reform TSCA based on the REACH model. We conclude that, although the problems identified prior to the enactment of REACH were similar to those identified in the U.S., REACH's key principles and elements were not adopted in the U.S. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To avoid safety issues, current marine operations safety protocols follow only the work procedures and technical structures of systems that are provided by the operator; regardless, research continues to report safety issues related to cooperative work within marine operational systems. Thus, we use the concept of boundary object to analyze excerpts from a series of field notes and to discuss holistic human safety. We illustrate that human safety is only supported at the individual level of engineering community practices but does not address safety at a cooperative level between marine operations and other operations. At the individual level, human safety issues can be related to technical errors and failures in interaction and communication. This paper presents suggestions on how to make the work practices of marine engineers and marine operators visible within design processes, enabling them to collaborate with engineering designers and human factors engineers in the design of marine operations safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ongoing Japan-wide project for the development and deployment of care and assistive robotic devices is being followed by a program of standardizing some of the outcome technologies while focusing on safe usage. We examine the concept defining the required standard as robotic technology is introduced. Fundamentally, this involves the application of the existing safety standard for service robots used to improve the quality of life. We expect that this program will contribute to enhancing safety in device usage, and further expand the device market by constructing a structure for sharing roles of supporting both the manufacturers and users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientific and technological advances have yielded a plethora of benefits, but the associated risks have increased as well. Although numerous safety standards have been established for various applications, these standards have not been adequately verified. In this study, a method is proposed for prioritizing safety standard priorities on the basis of minimal cut sets. In addition, safety standards obtained through fault tree analysis are applied to the breakdown modes and accident cause removal methods of failure mode and effects analysis to develop a validity verification method for safety standard sets. The developed method was applied to a gas-boiler exhaust system as a case study, and the validity of the safety standard sets and improvements in the safety standards were verified on the basis of the established safety standard priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reuse of systems and subsystem is a common practice in safety-critical systems engineering. Reuse can improve system development and assurance, and there are recommendations on reuse for some domains. Cross-domain reuse, in which a previously certified product typically needs to be assessed against different safety standards, has however received little attention. No guidance exists for this reuse scenario despite its relevance in industry, thus practitioners need new means to tackle it. This paper aims to fill this gap by presenting a systematic approach for reuse of safety certification artefacts across standards and domains. The approach is based on the analysis of the similarities and on the specification of maps between standards. These maps are used to determine the safety certification artefacts that can be reused from one domain to another and reuse consequences. The approach has been validated with practitioners in a case study on the reuse of an execution platform from railway to avionics. The results show that the approach can be effectively applied and that it can reduce the cost of safety certification across standards and domains. Therefore, the approach is a promising way of making cross-domain reuse more cost-effective in industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The automotive industry has successfully collaborated to release the ISO 26262 standard for developing safe software for cars. The standard describes in detail how to conduct hazard analysis and risk assessments to determine the necessary safety measures for each feature. However, the standard does not concern threat analysis for malicious attackers or how to select appropriate security countermeasures. We propose the application of ISO 27001 for this purpose and show how it can be applied together with ISO 26262. We show how ISO 26262 documentation can be re-used and enhanced to satisfy the analysis and documentation demands of the ISO 27001 standard. We illustrate our approach based on an electronic steering column lock system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynamic responses of a carriage under excitation with the German high-speed low-interference track spectrum together with the air pressure pulse generated as high-speed trains passing each other are investigated with a multi-body dynamics method. The variations of degrees of freedom (DOFs: horizontal movement, roll angle, and yaw angle), the lateral wheel-rail force, the derailment coefficient, and the rate of wheel load reduction with time when two carriages meet in open air are obtained and compared with the results of a single train travelling at specified speeds. Results show that the rate of wheel load reduction increases with the increase of train speed and meets some safety standard at a certain speed, but exceeding the value of the rate of wheel load reduction does not necessarily mean derailment. The evaluation standard of the rate of wheel load reduction is somewhat conservative and may be loosened. The pressure pulse has significant effects on the train DOFs, and the evaluations of these safety indexes are strongly suggested in practice. The pressure pulse has a limited effect on the derailment coefficient and the lateral wheel-rail force, and, thus, their further evaluations may be not necessary. Graphical Abstract: The dynamic behaviors of the train's degrees of freedom (horizontal movement, roll angle and yaw angle), the lateral wheel-rail force, the derailment coefficient, and the rate of wheel load reduction when two high-speed trains meet in open air are investigated with a multi-body dynamics method. The pressure pulse has a limited effect on the derailment coefficient and the lateral wheel-rail force, but it has significant effects on the train's degrees of freedom, for which evaluations are strongly suggested in practice. [Figure not available: see fulltext.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of wireless communication systems and the use of mobile phones by all categories of the population focuses the attention to the questions of the risks associated with the electromagnetic field exposure. Mobile devices, base stations for mobile communications, broadcasting transmitters, etc. produce high-frequency electromagnetic fields, which biological influence was intensively investigated, especially during the last decade. It is a common opinion in the existing literature that two groups of effects can be considered: thermal and non-thermal. There are clear evidences of the existence of thermal effects and a comprehensive overview of them is given in this paper. On the other hand, there are some contradictory reports regarding the existence of non-thermal effects caused by a long-term exposure to the low-level electromagnetic field, thus further research should give the right answers. Taking into account the possible effects of the high-frequency electromagnetic radiation is very important from the aspect of further work on the standards for exposure limits.