“Earthquakes don’t kill people. Buildings kill people.” — Wendy Bohon, geologist How many times have you been in a hazard review discussing the potential for a particularly severe event when someone asserts, “Well, I’ve never seen anything like that happen.” As though their proclamation of “never” settles the question. I sometimes ask them how long [...]
“The potential changes to particular provisions of the current PSM standard that OSHA is considering include: 8. Clarifying paragraph (e) to require consideration of natural disasters and extreme temperatures in their PSM programs, in Response to E.O. 13990.” — OSHA, 20-Sep-2022 call for Stakeholder comments I grew up in the Midwest. I’ve lived in Joplin, [...]
“Some safety professionals, in the name of ‘zero-injuries’, will heap regulation after regulation on a job until the organization rebels and simply refuses to comply.” — Phil La Duke There was a time when getting ready for winter meant making sure you had enough firewood to heat your cabin until spring. If you didn’t, your [...]
“The easiest way to solve a problem is to pick an easy one.” — Franklin P. Jones We love having choices. We hate making choices. What if we pick wrong? There is no shortage of people ready to tell us. It is always helpful to have criteria for choosing, or to be honest, to justify [...]
“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 [...]
“The district attorney could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich if he wanted to.” Judge Sol Wachtler Arkema is a ham sandwich. A year ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey and the flooding that followed, we got to watch trailers loaded with organic peroxide go up in flames and billowing clouds [...]
“If we accept there is no such thing as ‘zero risk’ then we should not spin the meaning of words with assertions such as ‘all accidents are preventable.’ – Dr. Rob Long In terms of process safety, one definition of risk is, “[The] combination of the frequency of occurrence of harm [the likelihood] and severity [...]
“Safety is a common denominator across all aspects of life, hence knowledge should always be shared. It is not a matter for industry it is a matter for humanity.” Doug Bourne, technical director at PM Lucas Six months ago, if you would have asked me to define the phrase “tolerable risk”, I would have stared [...]
