Chris’ comment on my post about differing risk assessments from the same data highlighted another factor that I thought worth mentioning:

You, by definition have 50% fewer hands the first screw-up. After that, it’s totally safe.

Chris has just defined his risk loss tolerance for getting his hand caught in a garbage disposal as being the non-fatal loss of one hand. Personally, my risk tolerance is no loss of any hand, but maybe it’s because you really need two hands to risk your life effectively.

I’ve now got my definition of risk loss tolerance (zero–no accidents whatsoever) for garbage disposal accidents. Let’s see if I can find some benchmark data. google for “garbage disposal accidents.” The only thing I find that even comes close is a discussion thread started by someone who seems to have decided that risk avoidance is their risk management decision for disposal risk. Someone in the thread points out, though, that

I tried to look up garbage disposal injuries…couldn’t find any that weren’t part of sit-coms or tv commercials.

I am sure that there are some that do happen…but you’ve got a bigger risk getting out of bed in the morning.

Finally, however, I found an extremely graphic photo (maybe nsfw) of a disposer full o’ fingers. So, assuming the image is both real and is actually a garbage disposal*, maybe these accidents happen after all.

So now, the question comes down to whether or not the likelihood is too high to be acceptable with my risk loss tolerance of zero. That makes this a binary event–either I have an accident or I don’t. While I haven’t kept count, I’d say that the number of times I’ve actually stuck my hand down a garbage disposer for any reason in my entire life probably averages out to less than once per year, so I’ll round up and use once per year as my rate of potential accidents.

There are about 300,000,000 people in the United States of America (Households would be a better number, but I don’t have it handy so I’ll round down on the proportion with disposals). Even if only 10% of them use garbage disposals, that’s still 30,000,000 people, each of them sticking their hand in it once per year.

If a google search (the source of all knowledge and no wisdom in the world today) can’t find a single reference to garbage disposal accidents, then the likelihood of it occurring is probably less than one in 7,500,000 (figure google news goes back 90 days–I’m pretty sure this is low, too).

I think I can live with that risk, even if I’m not a big risk taker like Chris.

* As opposed to some other piece of finger-removing industrial machinery–it doesn’t really look like the inside of a disposer to me, and seems to have just severed rather than disposing of the fingers, but I’m not looking again to be sure.

“So now, the question comes down to whether or not the likelihood is too high to be acceptable with my risk tolerance of zero. ”

If I may offer, Chandler, that I think your *loss* tolerance is zero, to be sure . But your risk tolerance isn’t zero.

Here’s why: you haven’t pulled the disposal out yet. When we had kids, that was the end to any dream I had about guns in the house. The Mrs. has no risk tolerance for child-gun accidents. Similarly there are people who don’t own motorcycles, get on planes, etc.. But the fact that you have a garbage disposal still in the house is at least a subconscious acknowledgment that the probability of chewing off a finger is acceptable.

Now, assuming that you don’t have some kind of disposal-phobia, we can walk around the Howell residence and find many, many more “risky” things that you do (some most every day). If you’re rational, you should be willing to come to some sort of conclusion that this was much done about nothing.

FWIW, when I posted my response, I had done about 10 min worth of google-ing and came up naught, as well.

Excellent point, Alex. I stand corrected and have updated the post updated accordingly :-) .

[…] Risk tolerance, risk appetite, loss avoidance.  It’s tough to have the discipline to be specific - but the terms matter, as do the perspectives.  Good stuff from Chandler. […]