ABSTRACT
Environmental health practitioners (along with just about everyone else) intuitively know that no rational person wants to cause pain or injury either to him-or herself or to their fellow humans. The continuing occurrence of environmental accidents (and other types of accidents) despite the obvious lack of intent indicates that there is a logical flaw in some part of the reasoning process. No doubt you have heard the old saying, “The best laid plans …,” and so forth and so on. Simply, when an environmental accident occurs, a breakdown in the cause-and-effect reasoning process is apparent. In this chapter, the goal is to describe a basic procedure for evaluating the logical reasoning process (system safety analysis) commonly used by environmental practitioners involved primarily in occupational health and safety and industrial hygiene activities.
