Division Glossary of terms

Source of danger involving the chance of being injured or harmed. A means of quantifying the hazard in a risk assessment is the severity of the possible injury or harm.

Hazard created by the properties of a product.

Balanced combination of a hazard and the probability that damage will occur. Risk describes neither the hazard, nor the probability, but both at the same time.

Procedure for identifying and assessing hazards, consisting of three steps:

1. 1..

   identification of the seriousness of a hazard;

2. 2..

   determination of the probability that a consumer will be injured by that hazard;

3. 3..

   combination of the hazard with the probability.

Degree of risk, which may be ‘serious’, ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’. When the (highest) level of risk has been identified, the risk assessment is complete.

Follow-up action, which is separate from risk assessment and aims to reduce or eliminate a risk.