Peter Drucker, an early 20th-century business professor observed “Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.” This series of LinkedIn articles will focus on the skills that...
This is Part Two in Midwest Chemical Safety's series on Normalcy After Covid-19. Catch up on the first part of the series here: Part One: Normalcy After Covid-19: Part One Getting From Here to There Due to the uncertainty of Covid-19 that we will face in the upcoming...
This is Part One in Midwest Chemical Safety's series on Normalcy After Covid-19. Read the next in the series here: Part Two: Normalcy After Covid-19: Part Two We have been at it for over six weeks now. Shutdown. Our businesses have been interrupted for a month and a...
The picture above is a photo of a Boy Scouts of America Eagle Scout Medal. It’s my Eagle Scout medal from 1976. The top of it says “Be Prepared” but it begs the question – Prepared for what?” My perspective – prepared for life. Right now, we all have been forced to...
The “root cause” of an incident is the fundamental reason why an incident occurred. If the root cause would have been eliminated, the incident would not have happened. I’ve been involved in numerous incident investigations throughout my career. During the last few...
“Train like you fight; fight like you train.” I remember those words from a Master Chief Petty Officer in 1986 at Damage Control School in Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. They mean “practice – a lot.” There’s something to be said about a team working together like a...
There are many organizations that are compliance driven. They think that if they are compliant with OSHA regulations then their organizations are working safely. This thinking is not necessarily true. Don’t misunderstand me. Compliance with regulations is important,...
I get the question at just about every workshop: “Do I have to put GHS-type labels on all of my in-use chemicals – even the 10 mL dropper bottles? The short answer is, “No,” provided that you are operating under the OSHA’s Laboratory Standard, 29CFR1910.1450. There...
There is occasional chatter on safety listservs regarding the use of respirators in academic laboratory work. Students don’t like the smell of organic chemistry lab work, and respirators are an easy fix, right? Not so fast…. Barring the necessity of making...