List of Diving Hazards and Precautions

List Of Diving Hazards And Precautions

Divers face specific physical and health risks when they go underwater with scuba or other diving equipment, or use high pressure breathing gas. Some of these factors also affect people who work in raised pressure environments out of water, for example in caissons.

A hazard is any biological, chemical, physical, mechanical or environmental agent or situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property, or environment. Most hazards remain dormant or potential, with only a theoretical risk of harm, and when a hazard becomes active, and produces undesirable consequences, it is called an incident and may culminate in an emergency or accident. Hazard and vulnerability interact with likelihood of occurrence to create risk, which can be the probability of a specific undesirable consequence of a specific hazard, or the combined probability of undesirable consequences of all the hazards of a specific activity.

The presence of a combination of several hazards simultaneously is common in diving, and the effect is generally increased risk to the diver, particularly where the occurrence of an incident due to one hazard triggers other hazards with a resulting cascade of incidents. Many diving fatalities are the result of a cascade of incidents overwheming the diver, who should be able to manage any single reasonably foreseeable incident.

The assessed risk of a dive would generally be considered unacceptable if the diver is not expected to cope with any single reasonably foreseeable incident with a significant probability of occurrence during that dive. Precisely where the line is drawn depends on circumstances. Commercial diving operations tend to be less tolerant of risk than recreational, particularly technical divers, who are less constrained by occupational health and safety legislation.

This article lists hazards that a diver may be exposed to during a dive, and possible consequences of these hazards, with some details of the proximate causes of the listed consequences. A listing is also given of precautions which may be taken to reduce vulnerability, either by reducing the risk or mitigating the consequences.

According to a North American 1972 analysis of calendar year 1970 data, diving was, based on man hours, 96 times more dangerous than driving an automobile. According to a 2000 Japanese study, every hour of recreational diving is 36 to 62 times riskier than automobile driving.