“Some risks are plainly acceptable and others are plainly unacceptable.” Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens When Justice Stevens wrote that opinion for the majority in the 1980 OSHA Benzene case, he went on to add that odds of fatality of one in a billion could not be considered significant but that for odds of [...]
“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” — Vernon Law When hit with the first winter storm of the season, everyone has to learn how to drive all over again. In our community, freezing rain coats everything, including the roads, which makes driving especially treacherous. A few years [...]
“Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.” Oprah Winfrey With 2018 coming to an end and 2019 just beginning, we’re provided with an opportunity to reflect on our accomplishments (and failures) of the past year while also looking ahead towards what we want to accomplish in the year [...]
“To have constructive conversations about … options, one needs to take a calm look at the numbers.” — David J.C. MacKay In addition to the usual hazards found in all jobs—transportation related fatalities, workplace violence, and slips, trips, and falls—the chemical process industries have three special hazards to worry about: fires, explosions, and toxic releases. [...]
“To many, total abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.” —St. Augustine “Check valves are worthless.” Every engineer I know has heard that. Many believe it. Quite a few have said it. Yet, check valves are still made and installed. How worthless could they be? Why Use Check Valves? Check valves are designed to allow flow [...]
“None of this will be important if there’s a zombie apocalypse. But how likely is that?” —Jason Vladescu I was once at a conference where I overheard a conversation at the next table during lunch. The two of them were talking about PSAs. I quickly realized that they weren’t talking about Public Service Announcements. They [...]
“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.” —Warren Buffett Caps and plugs serve no process function. It is a common practice to install a cap or plug on the end of a line that is open to the atmosphere, but the justification is for safety, [...]
“To invent the train is to invent the rail accident of derailment.” —Paul Virilio When most of us think of train derailments, we think of horrendous events, like the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster in 2013 that destroyed the town in Quebec and killed 47 people. Fortunately, the vast majority of train derailments associated with the chemical [...]
“There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.” Colin Powell Before I began working in process safety, I worked in banking. As with the process industry, we had rules and regulations, and repercussions if we failed to comply with them. As a manager, it was [...]
“The unlikely combination of potatoes and pasta does appear in some Italian recipes.” Yotam Ottolenghi People sometimes have a hard time appreciating the difference between risk and consequences. To help, we ask them to imagine the worst thing possible that could actually happen at their plant, but not to say what it is. Then we [...]
