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Electrical power transformer on local distribution lines in Mexico (C) Daniel FriedmanHazard vs Risk

What's the Difference & Why You Care when Setting Priority of Building / Indoor Environment Repairs

This article explains the difference between an environmental hazard and actual risk levels to building occupants from such hazards.

Making this less-than-obvious distinction between hazard and risk can help us decide when and how to spend money managing or addressing environmental and other hazards found in, on, and around buildings and their mechanical systems.

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- Daniel Friedman, Publisher/Editor/Author - See WHO ARE WE?

Distinguish Between Hazard vs Risk At or In a Building

Unidentified chemical drums discovered during a home inspection might indicate an environmental site contamination hazard.Across many building, mechanical, structural, and environmental hazards discussed in articles found at InspectApedia.com, the most common concerns expressed by our readers are

  1. How dangerous is something scary that I've found in my building or read about somewhere?
  2. What should I do or spend on fixing this concern?
  3. How quickly should I take action?

Safety, environmental and health experts have for some time made an important distinction between hazard and risk that, until it has been explained, is not obvious to the rest of us.

Photo: we found these drums used to store toxic chemicals at the site of a home inspection in New York.

[Click to enlarge any image]

Hazards at Buildings

If a substance or building condition is called a hazard, that simply means that there is a potential for harm.

For example, experts have said that asbestos is a hazardous material and a potential carcinogen.

But that statement doesn't tell us anything about the specific level of actual risk of harm at a specific building where asbestos might be present.

Risks at Buildings

Unlike hazards just mentioned above, some safety and health experts refer to risk as the probability of and severity of harm (to building occupants or perhaps to the building itself, depending on what issue is being discussed).

In a discussion of the relationship between food safety and health, Clemens et al (2016) put it this way:

... it is important to remember a simple acronym, RITE (Risk Is Toxicity x Exposure)

The authors point out that some things that people are very worried about actually produce no plausible risk [we add that] while others can be very high risk and deserve prompt action.

An example is found in U.S. EPA and other authorities' advice about non-friable asbestos materials. Although asbestos is hazardous, asbestos materials that are not shedding or releasing asbestos dust into the occupied space and that are being left undisturbed are hazardous but do not present a meaningful risk to building occupants.

We'd add that other concerns we may find at, in, or on a building might pose a very high risk even if they're not the first thing that catches our attention.

For example, falling down the stairs is one of the most common hazards in buildings.

Why is the Difference between Hazard and Risk Important?

Clearly we don't have an endless supply of money, time, and attention, and because we need to make rational decisions about when to expend those on addressing a concern at a building, it is essential to consider risk, not just hazard.

If we fail to consider risk, we can spend enormous amounts of time and money on the wrong problem at buildings.

As we summarized above, health and environmental professionals point out that in assessing the actual risk of harm from a hazardous material such as an environmental contaminant or unsafe building material (asbestos, lead paint, pesticides, etc.) the actual risk depends on

But for many building materials or conditions that involve hazardous materials or substances as well as risk of health or economic harm, we can make a simpler analysis: how serious is this problem, what sorts of harm are involved, and how urgently should we act?

Example 1: don't let a low-risk or remote hazard cause you to ignore a close and immediate hazard that is high-risk

EMF reading by cellphone (C) InspectApedia.com Lucas

Above: a reader's measurement of magnetic field strength.

A home buyer was extremely worried about and planned to spend a significant sum investigating whether or not the electromagnetic fields from overhead power lines a mile away were going to cause injury to the home occupants.

The strength of EMF falls off as the square of the distance, so his EMF measurement "under the power line" did not give a useful indication of the risk closer to his home.

Yet he was so frightened that he was planning to install expensive (and ineffective) EMF shielding around the home.

Photograph of unsafe basement reuturn air grille

But during the inspection we found stairs that had tall, rotting, uneven stair treads along a stairway with no handrails, an FPE electrical panel whose circuit breakers are known to fail to protect from fire and over-current at a significant rate, an unsafe chimney venting heating furnace that was back-drafting flue gases and potentially fatal carbon monoxide into the home, and a return air inlet right at the furnace, and several more immediate functional and safety concerns.

Our opinion was that even before considering the vulnerability of the building occupants or the duration of their exposure, the risks from those findings were far greater than the distant overhead electrical power lines.

See BACKDRAFTING HEATING EQUIPMENT

and compare those hazards to

EMF CANCER RISK from distant power lines.

Perspective on Risk of Injury or Death

The top three leading causes of preventable injury-related death – poisoning, motor vehicle, and falls – account for over 86% of all preventable deaths. No other preventable cause of death—including suffocation, drowning, fires and burns, and natural or environmental disasters—accounts for more than 5% of the total. - U.S. National Safety Council, To 10 Preventable Injuries (2023)

Similarly, The U.S. CDC, reporting on Top Ten Leading Causes of Death in the U.S. for Ages 1-44 from 1981-2020 notes that

Example 2: Don't Confuse a No-Exposure or Insignificant Exposure that Doesn't Merit Action with a Significant Exposure Hazard & Risk

Asbestos pipe insulation (C) Inspectapedia.com Mike

At ASBESTOS PIPE INSULATION a reader asked:

Is a small hairline dent worrisome on a asbestos plaster on pipe? - Anonymous 2023/09/01

We replied:

If your "small hairline dent" is the same as my idea of that sort of damage, my answer would be no.

Put another way, if asbestos- or asbestos-suspect pipe insulation is undamaged, that is, it's not shedding insulating material, then it's not releasing a meaningful enough amount of material to be considered a risk, even though asbestos itself is a hazardous material.

In contrast, the asbestos pipe insulation in the photo below is a hazard. Anyone who has to work in this space, say repairing a leaky pipe, faces a significant asbestos exposure risk because it's so difficult to move in the area without disturbing this friable material.

Asbestos debris on basement or crawl space floor, falling off of pipes (C) Daniel Friedman

And there is additional risk that workers or building occupants track this friable asbestos insulation into the occupied spaces of the building as well.

Research on Environmental Hazard vs Risk


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