Jared Kane

Most organisations can point to a risk register, a set of procedures, and a suite of controls. Many can show training records, audits, assurance activity, and a pattern of review. On paper, the system exists. It looks structured. It appears deliberate. It gives comfort to those charged with governance and those responsible for day-to-day delivery.

Energy and harm Long before modern safety systems, James Gibson observed that injury occurs when energy is transferred to the human body in amounts or at rates beyond its tolerance. William Haddon later expanded this into the Energy Damage Model: harm is not random, it is the result of uncontrolled energy transfer. Once you accept that framing, a more revealing question emerges: For any given hazard, what must happen for the energy to reach someone, and what prevents that transfer? Not all...

Dose, tolerance, and the nature of harm Paracelsus observed that “all things are poison… only the dose makes the thing not a poison.” Although written in the context of toxicology, the principle extends well beyond chemistry. In modern risk terms, dose is the relationship between energy and human tolerance. Humans are, bluntly, squishy creatures. We operate within narrow biological limits. The body can tolerate only finite levels of heat, force, voltage, pressure, acceleration, chemical...