“Fentanyl is everywhere. From large metropolitan areas to rural America, no community is safe from this poison.” — Anne Milgram I believe that we cannot reduce the number and rate of work-related fatalities if we do not understand what causes them. So, every December I study the annual statistics for work-related fatalities when the Bureau [...]
“They swore by concrete. They built for eternity.” — Günter Grass A tank truck hauling gasoline caught fire under an I-95 overpass outside of Philadelphia on Sunday, June 11, 2023. Not long after, the overpass collapsed. Concrete is not combustible, and most of us don’t think of structural steel as combustible, either. So, how could [...]
“Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.” — Benjamin Franklin The most common hazard we encounter during a HazOp is a leaking pipe. Not the most severe and not the highest risk. Just the most common. But we always encounter it. Why? Because pipes leak. All pipes, whether or not [...]
“Restaurant kitchens have grease fires all the time. A little oil on a burner, and you clear out a restaurant without raising too much suspicion or causing too much damage…Still, it’s best not to stick around too long after you’ve set a kitchen on fire.” — Michael Westen, on Burn Notice It’s hard to get [...]
“There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at one time.” — Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield When our children were young, we ate a lot of [...]
“The fact is the media never gets off the interstate unless there’s a major explosion.” — Jim Harrison On Friday, March 24, 2023, shortly before 5 pm local time, an explosion leveled the R.M. Palmer Company chocolate factory in West Reading, Pennsylvania, killing seven workers. How does a chocolate factory explode? What are the explosive hazards, [...]
“Banking should be boring.” — Senator Elizabeth Warren We tend to celebrate those adventurers who take big risks for the chance at big rewards, at least when it pays off. On the other hand, we tend to condemn those that take big risks but don’t suffer the consequences when their risk-taking doesn’t pay off. Especially [...]
“The name is the thing, and the true name is the true thing. To speak the name is to control the thing.” — Ursala K. Le Guin, The Rule of Names Process safety has three concerns: fires, explosions, and toxic releases. The most ancient of these concerns is fire. Because fire has been our servant [...]
“Luck is not an acceptable substitute for early detection.” — Valerie Harper Three weeks after the Norfolk Southern (NS) derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the well-meaning editorial board at the Washington Post published an editorial on “how to fix freight rail.” They consulted with a variety of transportation experts to come up with four recommendations: [...]
“There is nothing that this age, from whatever standpoint we survey it, needs more, physically, intellectually, and morally, than thorough ventilation.” — John Ruskin I worked on a project once that required me to spend a lot of time in the control building. It was a substantial building with a kitchen and breakroom, several offices, [...]
