{"id":1,"date":"2010-11-11T14:54:16","date_gmt":"2010-11-11T18:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/?p=1"},"modified":"2010-11-15T15:09:53","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T19:09:53","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/2010\/11\/11\/hello-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Normal Accidents Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Charles Perrow<\/a>, Professor Emeritus of \"\"<\/a>Sociology of Yale University, wrote \u201cNormal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies.\u201d <\/a> He defines normal accidents as \u201cthe interaction of multiple failures that are not in a direct operational sequence\u201d (p. 23).\u00a0 A good example is Three Mile Island.\u00a0 A failure in one component that was not detectable by control room operators led to a misinterpretation of the reason for loss of coolant that was reported by instruments in the control room.\u00a0 The operators\u2019 response led to a partial meltdown of the reactive core and a release of radioactivity (equivalent to a chest x-ray) and flurry of anti-nuclear activity.\u00a0 Fortunately, from a public health perspective, the Three Mile Island accident was inconsequential.\u00a0 However, not all normal accidents will be.\u00a0 In discussing the Deepwater Horizon accident, Rutgers University Professor Lee Clarke provides this perspective:<\/p>\n

Consider the idea that the disaster was a \u201clow probability\/high consequence\u201d event. From the outside looking in, BP\u2019s accident qualifies. The \u201chigh consequence\u201d part is obvious. It was \u201clow probability\u201d because big blowouts are rare, so the event caught us all by surprise.<\/p>\n

From the \u201cinside,\u201d though, it\u2019s possible the disaster probabilities didn\u2019t matter much. Perhaps there were good reasons to think the risk was worth taking. Maybe it was an \u201cacceptable risk,\u201d as we call it. If so, a large, uncontrollable blowout was just a matter of time<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How many of us in agriculture work with acceptable risks on a daily basis?\u00a0 (I hope the answer is obvious.)\u00a0 Retrofitting old tractors with roll-over protection systems<\/a> is a tangible way to avoid certain risks that were previously \u201cacceptable\u201d.\u00a0 Yet, when it comes to biosecurity risks in agricultural production, we might do well to change our threshold for acceptable risk.\u00a0 We move livestock to remote pasture, into barns, to fairs, to sale, and to slaughter without giving much thought to the biosecurity of the conveyances or venues and the potential risks involved.\u00a0 If a pig infected with a highly contagious disease like foot-and-mouth disease were in a show barn adjacent to a cattle barn at a show out-of-state and animals returned home before visible signs were detected, we would soon find out what a high consequence normal accident is like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charles Perrow, Professor Emeritus of Sociology of Yale University, wrote \u201cNormal Accidents: Living with High Risk Technologies.\u201d He defines normal accidents as \u201cthe interaction of multiple failures that are not in a direct operational sequence\u201d (p. 23).\u00a0 A good example … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":439,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15823,15824],"tags":[15901,8019,15899,15898,15860],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fmd-news","category-just-my-thoughts","tag-agricultural","tag-agriculture","tag-biosecurity","tag-charles-perrow","tag-foot-and-mouth-disease"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/439"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":257,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/jmsmith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}