“Love is like oxygen. You get too much, you get too high; not enough and you’re gonna die.” — Andy Scott, of Sweet OSHA standards define safe lower and upper limits to the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere to which workers are exposed. The limits are a minimum of 19.5% and a maximum of [...]
“Don’t cross the streams.” -Egon from Ghostbusters It doesn’t take much for two tasks to interfere with one another out in general industry. Work environments can be quite hectic as the end of a fiscal year approaches, where multiple goals and tasks are being wrapped up. Plant life is not much different, except some of [...]
“Notice. All Activities Monitored By Video Camera.” — Various Department Store Surveillance Signs The adage that a watched pot never boils is false. The boil will occur, regardless of whether someone is observing it. Watching the pot appears to increase the time it takes to boil, especially if that is the only task that the [...]
“Space is something you have to define. Otherwise, it is like anxiety, which is too vague. A fear is something specific. I like claustrophobic spaces, because at least then you know your limits.” — Louise Bourgeois A group recently met to discuss locking out a process vessel for entry. They identified the agitator, all of [...]
“Earthquakes don’t kill people. Buildings kill people.” — Wendy Bohon, geologist How many times have you been in a hazard review discussing the potential for a particularly severe event when someone asserts, “Well, I’ve never seen anything like that happen.” As though their proclamation of “never” settles the question. I sometimes ask them how long [...]
“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 [...]
“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 [...]
“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 [...]
