“Complaints are prayers to the wrong god.” — Anne Lamott We live in a culture that actively discourages reporting problems. We’re told “Complain less, appreciate more,” “No one likes to listen to complaints,” and “Never complain and never explain.” And extreme cases, we’re reminded that “Snitches get stitches.” Yet there are dozens of requirements to [...]
“I am always ready to learn although I do not always like being taught.” — Winston Churchill The Chemical Safety Board (CSB) describes its public safety mission as being to "drive chemical safety excellence through independent investigations to protect communities, workers, and the environment" with the vision of "a nation free from chemical disasters." The CSB’s [...]
“It doesn’t take many observations to think you’ve spotted a trend, and it’s probably not a trend at all.” — Daniel Kahneman In a December 2022 press release, CSB Chairperson Steve Owens alerted us all to a worrisome spike in CSB-reportable incidents at chemical facilities and the need to focus on winterization to prevent major [...]
“Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.” — Voltaire Early in my career, our boss assigned a colleague and me to investigate an incident that was still having a significant impact on the plant. Being an arrogant know-it-all, I mean, an engineer, I was confident that I already knew what [...]
“No Watson, this was not done by accident, but by design.” — Sherlock Holmes On Monday, February 17, 2025, after being cleared for landing at the Toronto Pearson International Airport, Delta Flight 4819, a Bombardier CRJ-900, crashed. Buffeted by wind gusts up to 37 mph, the plane hit the runway hard, lost its right wing, [...]
“You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.” — Bertrand Russell Many of us face a dilemma when it comes to fall hazards. Particularly when it comes to maintenance. The hazards are unavoidable, the consequences of [...]
“Recycling lithium-ion batteries is a complex and inherently risky process.” — Brian O’Connor, NFPA Recently, a lithium-ion battery-powered Cybertruck exploded outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas. It wasn't the Li-ion batteries that exploded, though. It was a cargo of fuel and fireworks. In the case of the Li-ion battery recycling plant in [...]
“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.” — Barack Obama Forty years ago, on December 3, 1984, the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India released 45 tons of methyl isocyanate. The official toll of immediate deaths is 2,259 people. Estimates of the final death toll ranges but [...]
“I have the normal complement of anxieties, neuroses, psychoses and whatever else – but I’m absolutely nothing special.”— Clive Barker The National Institute of Mental Health reported in 2022 that more than one in five adults in the United States live with a mental illness. That’s 59.3 million people, or 23.1% of the U.S. population. [...]
“If they knew it was water-reactive, why did they store it in a warehouse with automatic sprinklers?” — Chris Schmidt, retired pre-school teacher Wikipedia is a “go-to” source for quick information. Regarding the fire at the BioLab facility in Conyers, Georgia, however, it has this disclaimer: “Information may change rapidly as the event progresses, and [...]
