“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. [...]
“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 [...]
“The key to good decision making is not knowledge. It is understanding. We are swimming in the former. We are desperately lacking in the latter.” — Malcolm Gladwell Facilities in the chemical process industries were required to report accidental release events to the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) beginning back in March 2020. These included incidents [...]
“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 [...]
“One can state, without exaggeration, that the observation of and the search for similarities and differences are the basis of all human knowledge.” — Alfred Nobel Yearly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes fatality data for the U.S. workplace, private and public. Usually, it is in December for the previous year. Because of the government [...]
“It seems to me that at this time we need education in the obvious more than investigation of the obscure.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. OSHA requires incident reports. For recordable injuries or illnesses, OSHA requires that a 301 Form, Injury and Illness Incident Report, be completed, per 29 CFR 1904.29(a). For workplaces with PSM-covered [...]
“You know what’s the greatest part of anything ever in the history of everything? Exaggeration. No wait; it’s correcting yourself. No, better yet, it’s making lists.” — Demetri Martin When Google offers an AI response, it includes a statement: “AI responses may include mistakes.” That was never so obvious to me as when I posed [...]
“We sometimes freeze the specimen with liquid nitrogen, which is extremely cold, you know. This is another technique we use now – but the specimens are not alive.” — Lennart Nilsson I recently facilitated a HazOp where the process required both very hot heat transfer media (steam and hot oil) and very cold heat transfer [...]
“It is your concern when your neighbor’s wall is on fire.” — Horace On November 26, 2025, a fire enveloped a high-rise apartment in the Wang Fuk Court complex that was undergoing significant renovation. The fire killed at least 159 people and took the Hong Kong fire department almost two full days to extinguish. Hong [...]
“But you don’t ever think it would happen to you.” — Kyla Kennedy, server at Stooges Bar and Grill, near SDF (as quoted by CNN) The first time I ever gave any thought to the risk of a plane crashing into a chemical plant was when an acquaintance approached me at a conference with the [...]
