“Meetings should have as few people as possible, but all the right people.” — Charles W. Scharf Ever been in a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) meeting where there were over a dozen people? Wasn’t it excruciating? Either you wondered why you needed to be there, or you wondered why some of the other people needed [...]
“Ideas nearly always seem brilliant when they’re hatched, so we never act on a new idea for at least twenty-four hours.” — Steven D. Levitt Batch processes often rely on additions through open hatches for ingredients that don’t lend themselves to being pumped in through a pipe. These include liquid ingredients used in small quantities [...]
“Once you start something, finish it. Don’t accumulate a backlog of unfinished projects.” — Ed Bliss If you are on the Chemical Safety Board’s distribution list, you may have noticed a lot of trade releases from the CSB in your in-box during the last few weeks. They’ve been busy. A recent press release proudly announced [...]
“Time flies over us but leaves its shadow behind.” — Nathaniel Hawthorne Layers of protection analysis (LOPA) considers enabling conditions as part of the analysis. Enabling conditions account for an aspect of likelihood that if unaccounted for, would overstate the risk of a hazard. There are some organizations, however, that deem many of these enabling [...]
“OSHA has determined that…the Form 300A data are sufficient for enforcement targeting and compliance assistance at this time.” — OSHA in 84 FR 392, 25-Jan-2019 Many have a hard time distinguishing between an injury that is OSHA “recordable” and an injury that is OSHA “reportable”. “Recordable” means that an employer must complete a Form 301 [...]
“Sometimes using duct tape and baling wire is a terrible and/or dangerous choice.” — Kay Rhodes On Sunday, June 11, 2023, a burning truckload of gasoline under an I-95 overpass in Philadelphia caused the bridge to collapse. At the time, officials estimated that it would take months to repair the bridge. Twelve days later, on [...]
“Externalized costs are negative impacts associated with economic transactions which concern people outside of those transactions, meaning that neither the buyer nor the seller bears the brunt of the costs.” — Mary McMahon On December 29, 2008, a fire in a UCLA organic chemistry lab killed research assistant Sheharbano Sangji. In response, the University of [...]
“Among our articles of lazy hardware, I recommend the faucet that stops dripping when no one is listening to it.” — Marcel Duchamp Piping systems need drain and vent valves. For start-up, shutdown, maintenance, and other reasons. A piping system without appropriate drain and vent valves won’t work properly and is an exposure hazard for [...]
“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 [...]
