“It’s everything you do and nothing that you did.” — Steve Cash Poly-America is having a bad week. Last Wednesday, August 19, at around 1 am, a massive fire started at the Poly-America plant in Grand Prairie, Texas, outside of Dallas. Local news reports on that Wednesday stated that the black plume from the fire [...]
“What if this is as good as it gets?” — Jack Nicholson as Melvin Udall in As Good As It Gets, directed by James L. Brooks The year 2009 was first time I ever studied a graph of work-related fatality rates in the U.S. The data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was available for [...]
“Be afraid. Be very afraid.” — Geena Davis as Veronica Quaife in The Fly, directed by David Cronenburg Try as we might, we safety professionals cannot make people want to be safe. The challenge then, is to make them safer than they want to be. The Law of Conservation of Recklessness There is not officially [...]
“The amount of misinformation on the Internet – especially on Facebook and especially during times of crisis – is staggering.” — Benjamin Franklin We’ve returned to work here, although anyone who wishes to continue to work from home may. People stay separated, maintaining social distancing. The chairs in the break room are up on the [...]
“The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.” — John B. Finch I have mixed feelings about motorcycle helmets and mandatory helmet laws. As a safety professional, I know that they reduce the likelihood of head injuries and want to see motorcyclists wearing them. As a student of psychology and [...]
“The power of one man or one woman doing the right thing for the right reason, at the right time, is the greatest influence in our society.” — Jack Kemp What would you do if you witnessed an unsafe or prohibited act? Would you intervene or report it to someone who could intervene? Ethical obligations [...]
“When one is up to his ass in alligators, it is easy to forget that his original objective was to drain the swamp.” — William Moore Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, just about every person in the world now knows that PPE stands for personal protective equipment. But instead of thinking about hardhats and steel-toed [...]
“It is wrong to suppose that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it – a costly myth.” — W. Edwards Deming When I began working for Bluefield Process Safety four years ago, I was prepared to abandon my passion of psychology to pursue another – safety. What I didn’t know is that, often, [...]
“Here we go again. Fighting for resources. What the hell am I doing here?” — Brad Pitt as Roy McBride in Ad Astra I just received an email from a client. They were alarmed that the proposed Federal budget included, again, defunding the Chemical Safety Board, and wanted to know what they could do to [...]
“You’re a hero one day, you’re a villain another day.” — Vincent Tan Every good story is a story of conflict. It has a villain. It has a victim. And in the best stories, it has a hero. The story of a process incident or scenario is no different. It has villains—causes. It has victims—receptors, [...]
