A Near Miss: GKN’s MMA Tank in Southern California

“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 [...]

By |2026-06-04T10:37:57-05:00June 4th, 2026|Chemicals, Current Events, Process Safety|0 Comments

In the News: The Nippon Dynawave Tank Failure

“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 [...]

Incident Investigations: Not a Trial by Jury

“When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.”  — Norm Crosby During the 15 years I have lived in the city of Saint Louis, I’ve been called for jury duty four times. The most recent was just [...]

By |2026-05-22T08:07:37-05:00May 22nd, 2026|Process Safety, Process Safety Management|Comments Off on Incident Investigations: Not a Trial by Jury

Operations and Safety: The Disconnect

“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.” -Joseph Joubert On a busy afternoon, maintenance flagged a small leak on a piece of equipment, nothing urgent, but something that required a shutdown to fix properly. Operations pushed back. So, a temporary workaround was put in place, extra checks were [...]

By |2026-05-07T10:11:34-05:00May 7th, 2026|Workplace Safety|Comments Off on Operations and Safety: The Disconnect

Two Dead in West Virginia

“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 |2026-04-23T14:06:41-05:00April 23rd, 2026|Chemicals, Current Events, Process Safety, Workplace Safety|Comments Off on Two Dead in West Virginia

The Future of Shipping Hazardous Materials

“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 [...]

By |2026-04-16T11:05:24-05:00April 16th, 2026|Chemicals, Process Safety, Workplace Safety|Comments Off on The Future of Shipping Hazardous Materials

Regulating Chemical Safety: A Comparison of the EPA and OSHA

“The only thing that saves us from bureaucracy is its inefficiency. An efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty.”  — Eugene McCarthy A client recently posed this question: “Why do you think the EPA is more willing to update its regulations than OSHA?” Is it? We gave a glib answer – resources – but [...]

By |2026-04-09T14:47:31-05:00April 9th, 2026|Process Safety Management, Workplace Safety|Comments Off on Regulating Chemical Safety: A Comparison of the EPA and OSHA

Bad Chemistry: Energetic Decomposition

“Everything that comes together falls apart.”  — John Green When we think of decomposition, we usually think of it as a slow, inexorable process of breaking down useful things into malodorous glop. Think of that six-month-old head of lettuce in the bottom of the refrigerator. Or the carcass of the dead animal in the woods, [...]

By |2026-03-19T15:04:44-05:00March 19th, 2026|Chemicals, Process Safety|Comments Off on Bad Chemistry: Energetic Decomposition

CSB Incident Reports: Volume 4

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”  — Samuel Johnson Last year, the administration announced its intention to shutter the Chemical Safety Board. The chemical process industries rallied around this life-saving agency, and to our relief, funding was restored, almost, in [...]

By |2026-03-12T10:38:10-05:00March 12th, 2026|Chemicals, Current Events, Process Safety, Workplace Safety|Comments Off on CSB Incident Reports: Volume 4

Craft Distilleries and Microbreweries: Hatch Acts

“The faintly lit hatchway lay in the dark…like a grave yawning at judgement day in some old apocalyptic painting.”  — Cormac McCarthy One of the appeals of craft distilleries and microbreweries is that they produce small batches, so a lot of care goes into each batch. Small batches, by their very nature, require small additions [...]

By |2026-02-26T11:07:29-06:00February 26th, 2026|Craft Distillery Safety, Process Safety|Comments Off on Craft Distilleries and Microbreweries: Hatch Acts
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