“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.” — Stephen Hawking Beginning in March 2020, the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) began requiring that all facilities report all significant chemical releases. That way, they didn’t have to rely on media reports to know what was happening. After a slow start, [...]
“It is a truth universally acknowledged that you can’t wear white after Labor Day. But why?” — Anna Cafolla and Elise Taylor, Vogue Magazine There are few things more foolish than asking an engineer for fashion advice. But I have heard since I was a little boy, mostly from the girls and women in my [...]
“I have to buy three of everything. It doesn’t make any sense, but I have to. I’m worried I might lose it, and if I lose it, then I have a backup and then I have a backup to my backup.” — Huda Kattan I was travelling this week and while at the airport, I [...]
“That’s what insurance is for, right?” — Liam Dai (and thousands of others) There was recently a fire at a popular business in south Saint Louis city that was widely reported on the local news. As with many fires that happen here in Saint Louis, someone set up a GoFundMe fund to help the business [...]
“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 [...]
“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 [...]
“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 [...]
