Health, safety, and environment (HSE) are separate practice areas; however, they are often linked. The reason for this is typically to do with organizational management structures; however, there are strong links among these disciplines. One of the strongest links between these is that a single risk event may have impacts in all three areas, albeit over differing timescales. For example, the uncontrolled release of radiation or a toxic chemical may have immediate short-term safety consequences, more protracted health impacts, and much longer-term environmental impacts. Events such as Chernobyl, for example, caused immediate deaths, and in the longer term, deaths from cancers, and left a lasting environmental impact leading to birth defects, impacts on wildlife, etc.
Over time, a form of risk analysis called environmental risk analysis has developed. Environmental risk analysis is a field of study that attempts to understand events and activities that bring risk to human health or the environment.[11]