“This hour I tell things in confidence. I might not tell everybody, but I will tell you.” — Walt Whitman I once worked at a plant that produced performance chemicals. Performance chemicals are sold based on what they do rather than what they are. The key specifications are the performance specifications, not the composition specifications. [...]
“In limits, there is freedom.” — Julia Cameron There is great comfort in knowing that even the most hazardous substances have safe limits. One molecule of a substance is not enough to be hazardous. However, there is some concentration—especially for gases and vapors—that is too high to be exposed to safely. A lot of effort [...]
“If I’d known I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself.” — Billy Noonan The 1967 film, The Graduate, has one of the most famous lines in all of cinema. Mr. McGuire is giving advice to recent college graduate, Benjamin Braddock, played by Dustin Hoffman. Mr. McGuire: “Just [...]
“Rather than a prosecutor saying, ‘You have nothing to fear if you have done nothing,’ a more accurate portrayal would be ‘If I decide you have done nothing wrong, you have nothing to fear.’ ” — Sidney Dekker I hate it when a prosecutor, especially a politically ambitious prosecutor, decides that the best way to [...]
“ ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean neither more or less.’ ” — Lewis Carroll, in Through the Looking-Glass When Administrative Law Judge Richard DeBenedetto ruled against OSHA in the case of Secretary of Labor v. Meer Corporation (No. [...]
“I believe life is a series of near misses. A lot of what we ascribe to luck is not luck at all. It’s seizing the day and accepting responsibility for your future.” — Howard Schutz A chemical incident in Southern California unfolded over the 2026 Memorial Day Weekend that captured the attention of every major [...]
“Do you fix a wheel that isn’t broken, or do you wait until the cart collapses?” — Jodi Picoult During the week beginning Thursday, May 21, 2026, and going over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, our phones lit up with queries from friends and acquaintances about a series of chemical mishaps and disasters that got [...]
“You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you.” — Jacob Bronowski A few months ago, I wrote about a project that Bluefield was undertaking to understand the carbon dioxide levels in and around alcohol fermenters. Particularly the fermenters in craft distilleries and microbreweries. I promised to keep everyone [...]
“It was not uncommon; it’s what they do. But there was something going on that was different.” — C.W.Sigman, Director of Kanawha County Emergency Management At about 9:30 am on Wednesday morning, April 22, 2026, two chemicals reacted to form hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas, at the small Catalyst Refiners facility in Institute, West Virginia. [...]
“By far, the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it.” — Eliezer Yudkowsky This week at the 22nd Global Congress on Process Safety, my colleague Michael Smith presented a poster on “Getting Safer: The Future of Shipping Hazardous Materials”. His premise was that of all the modes [...]
