ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the use of numerical methods for comparing the different risks to which employees in the process industries are exposed. It suggests an extension of these methods to hazards which take a long time, typically several decades, to produce their effects. The chapter analyses the relative sizes of short- and long-term risks and identifies the higher risks. From society's point of view, long-term hazards, though they may kill many people, will kill them over a long period of time and will not produce the same trauma or public outcry as one that kills many people at a time. Coal miner joining the industry is thus about as likely to die from pneumoconiosis as from an acute accident, if past trends continue. Threshold limit value (TLV) are set despite the lack of data, and if there is enough information to set a TLV it should be possible to estimate a probability of death.
