Most people try and limit the risks that prevent us reaching old age. Each year more people quit smoking and we constantly promise to exercise more and maintain a healthy diet. Like new year's good intentions, many don't last the distance but a surprising number of hazards await us as we go about each days routine.
A year after it was discovered that an air bag fault could deliver a burst of shrapnel from even a minor car crash over 1.2 million cars on Australian roads are still unrepaired. This covers a range of makes and models and the constant factor is that a single manufacturer managed to capture a very big share of the entire air bag market. This has resulted in one of the biggest recalls in motoring history - and the task can only be managed by bringing in cars to a regular monthly quota plan. The present replacement rate is five thousand cars a week.
It is not helpful that every driver of an unrepaired car is playing "Russian Roulette "when they get behind the wheel. There is a chance that if the air bag deploys it will deliver shards of sharp metal components directly into the face of the driver. Much like facing down the barrel of a loaded shotgun. This recall will last well into 2017.
Of course,we would have ripped out those air bags if there was a hundred percent certainty of that happening - and the odds are very much in our favour. This fault has so far resulted in just twelve deaths globally, and faulty air bags removed from cars have been subjected to artificial crash tests to determine the risk factor. Of 30,000 tested - just 265 delivered shrapnel. The chances of dying from a faulty air bag is much less than one percent.
That old perennial - Legionnaire's Disease - is again cutting a swathe through people merely breathing the air on city streets. It takes between two and ten days for the symptoms to appear and it is a disease that tends to strike both old people and young children. At the moment there are thirty-nine victims recovering - and there has been one death.
It is believed that Legionnaires has a connection to the cooling towers that supply water to the air conditioning of major buildings. Spores of bacteria are generated and these float free and settle onto surrounding streets. Pedestrians become contaminated by breathing in this contagion, but the health authorities can usually pin point the general area and search out the source of infection.
This present outbreak is predictable. We have had one of the hottest summers on record and it has persisted to almost the start of winter. As a result, the Sydney air conditioning systems have been working relentlessly at maximum capacity and this has generated stress. Many management teams would be reluctant to close down the system on a very hot day for routine maintenance. High rise buildings would be impossible for workers and customers - and maintenance delays would be common.
There has also been a gap of many years since the last Legionnaires outbreak. It is important that the water in cooling towers is serviced regularly and the unrelenting pressure to contain costs may have pushed out time schedules. Testing has revealed the sources of some infections and that raises the possibility of both fines by the health department and liability claims from victims.
This infection cycle will quickly end. All the city cooling towers will get urgent maintenance and the air conditioning systems will ease back as the cooler weather arrives. The danger is that with the passage of time cooling tower maintenance will relax - and somewhere in the future we will have a repeat of this epidemic.
Just one more of the risk factors that are beyond our ability to control !
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