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Asked by anon-373816 on 13 Nov 2023.
Question: what was the most life threatening moment in your career?
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Jonathan Allen answered on 13 Nov 2023:
I haven’t had any moments in my career when my life was at risk. Although the nuclear industry that I work in is perceived as high risk, it is actually a very safe industry because we make safety our priority in everything we do. This means that the most risky thing I do in my job is driving my car to work or home! At work I am very safe my following rules and guidance for tasks and wearing PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) like overalls, safety boots, gloves, helmets and safety glasses.
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Octavia Brayley answered on 13 Nov 2023: last edited 13 Nov 2023 12:46 pm
Probably when I went to Botswana during my Gap year (7 years ago). We were in an open-top Land Rover and we were attacked by an elephant! The car was rolled and its tusks came through the windscreen. Definitely a real moment where I thought we might not make it! So scary! The tour guide wrote an article about it that was featured in a BBC Wildlife magazine and I also wrote a blog about the experience: https://biologicalsciences.blogs.bristol.ac.uk/2019/02/18/elephant-attack-in-botswana/
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Ian McKinley answered on 13 Nov 2023:
Although I worked in Fukushima after the accident, this was not at all dangerous. However, a project in Jordan about 20 years ago was very dangerous, as we were sampling close to the border with Syria. A flood had washed landmines into the area we were working, which had killed a soldier the week before we arrived. We had to jump between exposed rocks to cross the danger zone.
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Olly Bartlett answered on 13 Nov 2023:
I was lucky enough to come face to face with a polar bear and live while camping in the Arctic. Close enough to make eye contact, probably about the length of a classroom. Fortunately for me Keith clearly wasn’t very hungry otherwise I would not be here answering this question.
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Amy Stockwell answered on 13 Nov 2023:
Thankfully none! These days I work on a computer all day. But I used to work in labs and factories. There we had strict rules and had to assess everything we did for safety. Our mantra was “do it safely or don’t do it at all”.
Sadly I do know people who have been injured due to safety rules being ignored. -
Paula McMahon answered on 15 Nov 2023:
I hate heights – so every time I had to climb onto a building I felt like it was. I was safe as was wearing harness and had other safety measures.
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Andrew Lyon answered on 15 Nov 2023:
Luckily I haven’t had any!
I have visited a number of industrial sites and some can be very dangerous. However, we have strong Health and Safety laws to manage the risks. We look at what could cause injury or illness (hazards) and then decide how likely it is that some could be harmed and how seriously (the risk).
We then create a risk assessment to try and eliminate the hazard or where this isn’t possible, control the risk. For example on a landfill site, we can eliminate hazards by not going near the large vehicles (because they might not be able to see us) and not going where the dustbin lorries are emptying (because they contain about 20 tonnes of waste!).
The risk assessment will also tell us what PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) we need to wear such as a hi-vis jacket so we can be seen more easily; a hard hat, gloves and safety glasses for protection. It’s also important that boots that have steel toe caps to protect your toes and also a steel mid sole to protect your foot in case you tread on something sharp.
I always wore boots rather than wellies because there was often a lot of mud and I used to test how deep the mud was before walking in it. If I couldn’t feel the ground below in my boots I thought it was too deep to walk in.
Comments
Amina commented on :
Working with toxic chemicals which have been deemed to be carcinogenic (cancer-causing) could be dangerous, but this is why we have health and safety guidelines in place to protect ourselves and our colleagues/team mates. Other than that, I do not think that my line of work is that dangerous. I work mostly with fish and shrimp, feeding them or analysing their feeds.