- Title
- Postal IEDs and risk assessment of work health and safety considerations for postal workers
- Creator
- Grant, Matthew; Stewart, Mark G.
- Relation
- International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management Vol. 22, Issue 2, p. 152-169
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJRAM.2019.101272
- Publisher
- Inderscience
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Postal improvised explosive devices (IEDs) provide criminals and terrorists with a convenient mechanism for delivering an energetic payload to an intended victim with little operational risk. Postal IEDs formed 7% of IED attacks reported in the West between 1998-2015, are often dispatched in groups and can bring postal systems to a standstill. Nearly 30% of postal IED explosions occur in the postal worker environment and a third of the casualties caused by postal IEDs are postal workers. Postal IEDs are debatably a reasonably foreseeable cause of harm to postal workers and should be considered under the work health and safety (WHS) constructs of many Western nations. This paper considers this problem, using a probabilistic risk assessment model to inform a cost-benefit analysis considering potential risk reduction options for postal workers. It identifies that the control measures identified were not cost-effective where only the direct WHS costs pertaining to unintentional postal IED detonation within the mail delivery system were considered given the risk levels identified.
- Subject
- improvied explosive device (IED); terrorism; probabilistic risk assessment; work health and safety (WHS); postal bomb
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1508446
- Identifier
- uon:56125
- Identifier
- ISSN:1466-8297
- Language
- eng
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