Risk identification and implementation of appropriate preventive measures ensure safe and healthy jobs
The requirement of the risk assessment at work in our country results from the current legislation in this area, harmonized with the EU legislation on occupational safety and health.
A complete elimination of hazards, or work accidents and occupational diseases in a given operating system is practically impossible.
In reality, there is an acceptable level of safety at work and for its highlighing serious efforts for the qualitative description and quantification of risk (probability distribution) is required.
Basically, there are two possibilities for the evaluation of the safety level in a working system:
- • Assessment after work accidents / occupational diseases occure;
- • Assessment before work accidents / occupational diseases occure.
The assessment after work accidents have occurred is important for issuing of statistics, and indicates by the frequency and severity index a global image of the working system. In certain cases, this information is useful for the evaluation of the quality of the workplaces regarding work safety in order to implement the necessary improvements.
The assessment prior to the occurrence of work accidents takes into account the possibility that accidents can occur in a system, but offers solutions to avoid this.
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Given by the importance of assessment before accidents occur, several methods have been developed:
- • Sampling, testing: of work places, workshops etc.;
- • Direct methods (comparison);
- • indirect methods (analytical): risk analysis based on the ergonomics or reliability of the systems.
In this context it can be said that the main task for the prevention consists in achievement of a maximum efficiency and quality of work, with the condition to reduce the number of accidents to zero.
Therefore, two important main goals of prevention arise:
a) on human level: reducing of work accidents and occupational diseases
b) on financial level: reducing of costs associated with occupational injuries and diseases. 
The risk assessment means the identification of all risk factors in an analyzed the work system and the quantification of their size based on the combination of two parameters: the probability of their apperance and the highest severity on the human body.
This principle of risk assessment is already included in the European standards and forms the basis of different methods with practical application.