Monday, July 5, 2010

What Is Safety Culture?

The beginning of the safety culture period of accident investigation and analysis can be traced back to the nuclear accident at Chernobyl in 1986 in which a 'poor safety culture' was identified as a factor contributing to the accident by both International Atomic Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developement Nuclear Agency (Cox and Flin 1998; Mearns and Flin 1999; Pidgeon 1998).

Since then safety culture has been discussed in other major accident inquiries and analyses of system failures, such as King's Cross underground fire in London and the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion in the North Sea (Cox and Flin 1998; Pidgeon 1998), as well as the crash of Continental Express Flight 2574 (Meshkati 1997), The Columbia Space Shuttle accident (CAIB 2003), and the explosion at the British Petroleum Refinery in Texas City (CSB 2005.

So, what is Safety Culture?

'the product of multiple interactions between people (psychological), jobs (behavioural) and the organization (situational) in the field of occupational safety and health'

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