Development of risk assessment techniques for use in the field of explosives and ammunition

Abstract Criteria for estimating the risks involved with ammunition and explosives are presented against a background of the public's perception of risk. The criteria are presented in terms of a three band approach separated by two threshold risk levels. The upper and lower bands represent unacceptable and trivial risk situations respectively, whilst the middle band represents a region in which the risk levels must be reduced to as low a level as is reasonably practicable. Individual Risk criteria are presented for three groups of people: the workforce necessarily exposed to risk in the course of their daily work, those members of the workforce who do not need to be exposed to risk in order to do their work and the general public. In the case of Societal Risk only one set of criteria are presented on the basis that when a major incident involving large numbers of casualties occurs the public reaction does not discriminate in its perception of horror between members of the general public and members of the workforce. In addition to preserving life it is suggested that criteria are required to preserve stocks in situations where life itself may not be at risk. For this it is recommended that the propagation of initial initiation or explosion to other munitions nearby by sympathetic detonation should be prevented, as far as possible, by the maintenance of the current separation distances for magazines, updated where necessary as new knowledge becomes available and new explosives and munitions are developed. The present tentative proposals are compared with quantitative risk evaluation criteria proposed in other countries and in other industries.