Safety First

When does the killing stop?

December 2012

Sometimes, I wish that I didn't care....

Acceptable Risk

December 2012

Life is an exercise in risk assessment. We make thousands of decisions every day based on conscious or unconscious assessments of relative risk....

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The Indelible First Impression

December 2012

Safety training is not an end unto itself. Rather, it is one tool among many in a manager's toolbox...

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Bet Your Job Every Day

Back in the 1980s, my corner of the defense industry was divided into three distinct camps: the “program” folks made all the promises to the government about what we could do to serve their military needs; the “production” folks transformed all those promises into actual weapons; and the safety folks (me and mine) stood watch to make sure that the products designed to kill bad guys did not in fact kill the good guys who built them.

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Safety: Buy The Numbers

It’s long been a matter of record that I resist discussing employee safety as a statistical matter.

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Dangerous DART Game

Come on, be honest. We all love competition. Whether it’s grades in school or earned run averages or price-earnings ratios, we love to gather numbers together and see how Party A measures up to Party B.

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Combustible Dust Explosions

Truthfully, I never thought of the scrap recycling industry as one that poses an unreasonable risk for combustible dust explosions.

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Falls

You know the old saw: Falls are easy; it’s the stop that kills you.

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Golden Employee

I’ll be delicate: not all of you hold your employees in the highest regard.

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Hiring for Safety

A common lament among scrap yard managers is their employees’ refusal to wear personal protective equipment.

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Las Acciones Hablan Más Que Palabras (Hispanic Workers)

Anecdotal evidence shows that in the recycling industry, Hispanic workers suffer a disproportionate share of injuries.

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As Usual, Mom Was Right (Hypothermia)

I was watching the movie Apollo 13 the other day. Late in the first act, we watch as astronauts don their flight duds. It takes a team of three to help each crew member into his boots and his two layers of gloves and his big ugly hat.

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Is That Actually A Regulation?

I hear that all the time. In the good version, the question is prompted by some little-known, rather esoteric bit of regulatory information, but all too often, the surprise is tied to things that people really should have already known.

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It's Not Supposed To Be Easy

They say that safety is their first priority, yet they scheduled their mandatory all-manager, all-day safety training session on a Saturday, when production would be down anyway.

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No Choice But To Hurt You

I hear this a lot: “Our goal is to have zero accidents this year.” Sounds commendable, right?

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Compliance Isn't What Matters

I recently overheard a yard manager trying to motivate an employee to work safely by warning that the outrageously dangerous thing he was doing was an OSHA violation, and that he was doing it in the presence of “ISRI’s OSHA guy.” (That would be me.)

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Perfect Murder

Let’s think like a murderer. Let’s put our heads together to devise the most efficient and effective means to kill a scrap yard worker.

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Those Pesky Professional Ethics

Safety professional share a common mission of trying to convince management teams to adhere to a safety commitment that is all too often both thin and brittle, doomed to be broken as soon as the next production crunch hits.

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Start By Shutting It Down

At a member’s non-ferrous facility, workers routinely sort very sharp stampings (“like razor blades”), separating copper from stainless.

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Watch Your Back

Safety guys have to be optimistic. We have to believe in the inherent goodness of people, and the common desire to send workers home whole and healthy.

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When I'm Elected King

Hey, lighten up; it’s just a figure of speech. While I confess to certain wild aspirations for my life, World Domination is not among them. Actually, I think it would be exhausting.

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Intervention Letters

April 2011

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What Do Your Safety Meetings Look Like?

October 2011

I hear from a lot of frustrated managers that safety meetings are, for lack of a better term, sort of a waste of time.
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Accident Schmaccident

November 2010

A lot has been written and said over recent years about the perceived emphasis on “political correctness”—the catch phrase that renders certain politically-charged phrases unmentionable—but the reality is that American culture has long lived by the euphemism.

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Compressed Gas Cyclinders Are Bombs Waiting to Explode

October 2010

Believe it or not, explosives plants are designed to blow up safely.

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Stuff That Baffles Me

August 2010

Every morning as I shower and brush my teeth, I watch/listen to the cheerful, well-coiffed network newscasters as they present what passes for news these days. This morning, wedged between reports of the latest celebrity marriage and the reasons why diets fail, my network of choice presented an in depth interview with a "courageous" young man”a "hero" no less”who had to cut off his own arm because he reached into his furnace to retrieve a tool, and he couldn't pull the arm out again through the louvers.

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Are You Ready for What's Coming?

February 2010

By all estimations, interesting times lie ahead as the Obama administration gets serious about its occupational safety and health agenda. Gone, it seems, are the emphases on alliances and consultations, set aside in favor of an increased focus on enforcement and higher fines.

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A Fire Is Coming

January 2010

Although fire is not a big source of employee injury in the recycling business, it is a huge source of property losses. Emphasis on huge.

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Anger Management

December 2009

It happens with disturbing frequency, yet each time, it manages to shock us: in a pique of emotion, someone walks into a workplace or a church or a school and starts shooting.

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423930

October 2009

423930... does this look familiar?

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Highway Torpedos

September 2009

A year and a half after the incident, it's still hard to imagine the carnage...

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It's Been a Tough Few Weeks

August 2009

The last six weeks have been tough for our industry, seeing three major fires and a fatality involving a worker run over by a 30-ton loader. The fatality is still under investigation, but the facts are fairly self-evident: The operator didn't see the man who was crossing behind the loader.

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