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May 15, 2026
A proposed standard currently being developed by ASTM International’s occupational health and safety committee (E34) will provide a guide for defining and classifying serious injury and fatality (SIF) events that do not directly cause injuries and illness. Workplace incidents included in the proposed standard (WK94122) will include serious fires, property damage, unintended environmental releases, business interruption, and other events with major business impact.
ASTM member Ben Ferguson notes that the intended application of the proposed standard is to provide organizations with a standardized, risk-based prioritization logic for non-injury serious incidents that had SIF-levels of energy, and to provide guidance on metrics that can be benchmarked for these incidents. Organizations that have started or are exploring their SIF-prevention journey are the primary audience in mind for this guide, but it will also be useful to organizations’ enterprise risk management, business continuity, and community impact management teams.
“The proposed standard provides a way to prioritize significant events that may not have involved injuries, but had sufficient energy to create life-ending, life-altering, or life-threatening impacts to people,” says Ferguson, senior consultant, Fisher Improvement Technologies. “It also helps prioritize actions and improvements for events involving fires, explosions, unintended environmental impacts, and impacts to the community around a facility or operation.”
Ferguson invites all interested parties to join E34 in the developing the proposed standard, particularly personnel who work in or have experience in:
The committee is developing related proposed standards on assessing SIF risks (WK92349) and on engaging leaders and teams in SIF prevention (WK92350).
ASTM welcomes participation in the development of its standards. Join ASTM.
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