There’s nothing like contradiction and hypocrisy to demolish credibility. Talk is cheap and spin is easy. This is the way of zero ideology (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/). Folly is the foolishness of a façade compared to the substance of reality.

Any language of zero always ends up looking stupid, idiotic and disingenuous. We see this regarding the Samarco Disaster (https://theconversation.com/they-do-not-respect-our-land-they-do-not-respect-our-people-brazils-traditional-people-take-on-bhp-in-one-of-the-worlds-biggest-class-actions-241777).

And, when anything goes wrong with those who spruik zero , we witness denial (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/21/bhp-accused-of-doggedly-trying-to-avoid-responsibility-for-brazil-dam-disaster), delusion, cynicism and obfuscation. Immoral conduct to cover up immoral conduct.

In 2015, the Fundão tailings dam at Samarco failed, resulting in the loss of 19 lives in the Mariana area and substantial downstream social and environmental impacts in the Doce River basin. The extent of the damage caused by the tailings dam collapse is the largest ever recorded with pollutants spread along 668 kilometres (415 mi) of watercourses. The release of 43.7 million cubic metres of toxic mine tailings into the Doco River created a humanitarian crisis and now 660,000 plaintiffs in a class action are seeking justice (https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/10/21/brazil-victims-of-mining-disaster-take-bhp-to-court-in-london). Ah, zero harm!

And zero ideology litters the organisation with meaningless words.

 Let’s look at a few examples:

‘Protecting the safety and wellbeing of our workforce and the communities where we operate is of the highest importance at BHP and is underpinned by Our Values.’

(https://www.bhp.com/sustainability/safety-health/safety)

Or this one:

BHP commits to zero-harm tailings management approach

(https://safetowork.com.au/bhp-commits-to-zero-harm-tailings-management-approach/)

I wonder what the 660,000 people in the class action think of BHPs ideology and language of zero?

The headline reads: They do not respect our land. They do not respect our people’

This is what zero ideology does, all based on the unethical idea that perfectionism make sense for fallible people. Then with gobbledygook language about nobility, principles and values, turn language into meaningless nonsense (https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2024-10-20-new-sa-mine-health-and-safety-targets-can-be-reached-but-zero-harm-will-remain-elusive/).

No wonder the AIHS don’t want to mention zero in their chapter on Ethics. No wonder academics aligned with the discourse of innovation, with no expertise in ethics (Provan and Rae), spruik zero as moral. No wonder safety trots out engineers to give workshops in ethics (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/). No wonder Safety anchors itself to religious discourse in the face of its denial of fallibility.

Yet, we know that any discourse on perfectionism is a mental health disorder (https://safetyrisk.net/mental-health-and-zero-harm/)!

Yet, in no other arena do we expect perfection of people. We would never do it in our marriages, parenting, schooling or health care. That’s because those sectors are managed by professionals. Ah, not so safety.

Here are some hints at what to do with zero:

·         The best approach to perfectionism is to not talk about it.

·         Injury is not a measure of safety.

·         Harm is not a measure of incompetence.

·         Zero is not just an immoral goal, it is immoral language.

·         The best way to improve safety is to get rid of zero.

If you want to read a case study of a global company that got rid of zero and how safety improved, you can read here: https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/

If you want to read a case study of fraudulence in safety, you can read this about DuPont here: https://safetyrisk.net/dark-waters-the-true-story-of-dupont-and-zero/

And fraudulence is clearly a immoral activity (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-fraudulence/).

Without an ethic of risk, transparency in conduct, integrity in communication, wisdom in discourse, maturity in risk or truth telling (https://safetyrisk.net/standing-on-the-myths-of-safety/ ), safety can never be professional (https://safetyrisk.net/three-lessons-in-how-to-be-unprofessional/ ).