Vitalsmarts: Silent Danger Resources

See if your organization is in a similar situation as the companies in these videos.

• Video 1: At the plant
• Video 2: On the rig

Workplace Safety Resources

• Executive Summary
  Read a summary of the study’s key findings.
• A VitalSmarts Speech
  The five crucial conversations that put safety at risk.
• Workplace Safety Case Study
  See how Pride International improved safety by 55 percent.
• Industry Overviews
  Key findings for three specific industries:
  
  
  • Oil & Gas
  • Chemical Manufacturing
  • Utilities

News & Media

• Frequently Asked Questions
• EHS Magazine Editorial: Accidents Waiting to Happen: The Five Crucial Conversations that Drive Workplace Safety
• Official Press Release

Sharing Values Out Loud: Finding Your Ethical Muscle

Voicing values in the workplace  Professor Mary Gentile explores ethical dilemmas at work and how to act on them.  In this video interview, Gentile shares insights and experiences on how to do that, which she’s gathered through her work developing the Giving Voice to Values curriculum and her eponymous book.¹ McKinsey Publishing’s Lily Cunningham conducted the interview with Mary Gentile in New York in June 2010.

From McKinely Quarterly https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Voicing_values_in_the_workplace_2663

Safety in the Undergraduate Classroom

A CHED/CHAS symposium on “Safety in the Undergraduate Classroom” is scheduled for the national American Chemical Society meeting in Anaheim in March 2011.    

The symposium description is:  “In 2008 the ACS Committee on Professional Training published the revised Guidelines for Bachelor’s Degree Programs which affirm that undergraduate chemistry programs must include safety education ‘as an integral part of the chemistry curriculum’ and that ‘throughout their studies students must experience safety procedures and processes.’  This symposium will include presentations of how different colleges and universities design and implement safety instruction in chemistry courses, both in individual courses and in curriculum-wide programs.  By sharing successful programs, we can all improve what we do on our home campuses and better educate our students for their future careers as safe scientists.”

Abstracts submission opened on August 23 and will close on November 1.  Abstracts may be submitted at: http://portal.acs.org/portal/acs/corg/content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_SUPERARTICLE&node_id=432&use_sec=false&sec_url_var=region1&__uuid=4a6243b7-7507-41ab-a43d-ab47cee2ab78

Previous similar symposia at the ACS meeting in San Francisco (March 2010) and the BCCE (August 2010) offered many useful ideas about academic safety programs to attendees.

Interim queries may be directed to me.

Thanks. 

Dave

David C. Finster
Professor of Chemistry
University Chemical Hygiene Officer
Department of Chemistry
Wittenberg University
dfinster@wittenberg.edu

Monona Rossol on The Toxic Chemicals Safety Act

Listen now: The Leonard Lopate Show Wednesday, August 4, 2010 

Monona Rossol, chemist and industrial hygienist, talks about the Toxic Chemicals Safety Act currently before Congress and what changes it calls for. She'll also take calls and answer questions about the safetly of household chemicals.  

Also see "Two Bills for Safer Chemical Policies Introduced," Arts, Crafts and Teacher Safety Newsletter, ACTS FACTS, August 2010. 
Monona Rossol, Editor, ACTSNYC@cs.com, www.artscraftstheatersafety.org
Reprint policy: www.artscraftstheatersafety.org/newsletter.html

(More Lopate radio interviews on this and related topics: http://beta.wnyc.org/people/monona-rossol/)

• Read more about the Senate's "Safe Chemicals Act" here.
• Read more about the House's "Toxic Chemicals Safety Act" here.
• Monona Rossol's Web site

Jimmie Robinson, Survivor, interview on Pittsburgh radio KDKA Sept 4, 2010

On Saturday, September 4, 2010 at 7am EST David M. Brown, co-author of Gone at 3:17, will be on the Rob Pratte Show on Pittsburgh's KDKA Radio 1020AM (www.kdkaradio.com) interviewing (by phone) a New London explosion survivor, Jimmie Jordon Robinson.     

Jimmie Jordon was an 8-year-old third-grader attending classes at the grammar school adjacent to the Jr./Sr. high school.  She always went to meet her sister Elsie, 11, at the high school so they could go home together.  They were inseparable.  Jimmie was standing at the doorway to Elsie's classroom when the building exploded. 

 

This is one of the most heartwarming survival stories that took place in the midst of the worst school disaster in history, and Jimmie , now 81, retells it as if it happened yesterday.   

More: Survivor Story: Jimmie Robinson

Gone at 3:17 (http://www.schooldisaster.com

David M. Brown david@schooldisaster.com, 

Michael Wereschagin (co-author) michael@schooldisaster.com.

Ceres is serious about safety

Investors Ask Oil, Insurance Groups to Disclose Safety Plans  August 5, 2010 By NATHANIAL GRONEWOLD of Greenwire

NEW YORK -- A coalition of mostly institutional investors is demanding oil and gas companies disclose their existing safeguards and plans of action in the event of another offshore rig disaster and possible oil spill like the one experienced by BP PLC and other companies in the Gulf of Mexico.

Led by Ceres, a Boston-based nonprofit committed to promoting investor activism in environmental and social issues, more than 50 U.S. and global investors sent letters to major offshore oil and gas producers. The letters request, among other things, that companies disclose their investments in spill prevention technologies, their contingency plans in the event of a deepwater well blowout and their risk exposure to possible new regulations on deepwater drilling activities.

Insurance companies that back policies for the oil and gas industry also received letters from the group. Those letters ask insurers to disclose whether they are considering adjusting their relative exposure to the industry or are changing underwriting rules in the wake of the disaster.

Read more.

Accidents Haunt Experimental Science

From the August 2010 Scientific American Magazine   Danger in School Labs: Accidents Haunt Experimental Science by Beryl Lieff Benderly  

 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=danger-in-school-labs