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May 16, 2007

On 99.9%

Recently at a large conference of major food manufacturers (Hormel, Kraft, General Mills, etc) one company, I won't say which, stood up to boast their 99.9% food purity rating. Food purity refers to the fact that it's not contaminated with E. Coli, Botulism, or some other nasty that'll make you sick. The chairperson then stood up and informed the group of how dismal a number that was. See, considering the mass tonnage of food that this company produces, that 0.1% of food that slips through still equates to several tons of contaminated food that this company packages and sells. The company spokesperson stood up again and stated that their food purity was actually much better, that she had used 99.9% as an figure only to prove her point, that she had no actual hard data. Everyone in the room belived her, and so do I. If 99.9% had been true then someone probably would have noticed the several tons of food produced that was making people sick.

This story got me interested in what other industries are doing better than 99.9%. Here's some examples:

At 99.9% the airline industry would have had 431 crashes last year.
At 99.9% 1200 babies would have been given to the wrong mother.
At 99.9% 26,000 surgeries would have been performed on the wrong limb.
At 99.9% over a million major medication errors would have occured in hospitals.
At 99.9% a fatal car wreck would happen every 11 second is California.
At 99.9% I would have been involved in 2 helicopter crashes in the past year while at work.

These are just a few numbers but they illustrate my point. 99.9% seems like a great success rate until you look at how many incidents are involved in that 0.1% failure rate. Most of our major industries enjoy a safety and success rating much higher than 99.9%. Despite that fact it's still a major media event when they make an error and someone gets harmed.

Posted by at May 16, 2007 07:42 AM

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Comments

those were highly interesting numbers... really gets you thinking!


***AUTHOR'S RESPONSE

I avoid thinking, it hurts my brain.

Posted by: meagan at May 16, 2007 04:04 PM