Leading and Learning Through Safety
Leading and Learning Through Safety
Episode 149: Process Safety Leadership
This episode of the "Leading and Learning Through Safety" podcast, hosted by Dr. Mark French, focuses on chemical safety and the importance of robust safety programs in workplaces dealing with high-heat chemical processes. Dr. French discusses a recent fatal fire in Chattanooga involving a chemical reaction used in a metal hardening process called nitriding. He highlights the critical role of safety systems and emergency response plans in preventing and managing such incidents.
Dr. French expresses concern over the company's apparent lack of visible leadership and environmental safety commitments on their website, suggesting that these elements are crucial for effective safety culture. He also mentions his upcoming presentation at the Tennessee Safety Conference, where he will discuss the intersection of physical and psychological safety in workplaces, emphasizing the significant influence of leadership on organizational safety.
Throughout the podcast, Dr. French underscores the importance of learning from incidents, thorough safety investigations, and proactive measures to ensure workplace safety and prevent future tragedies.
This week on the podcast we're talking about chemical safety and heat based chemicals more on the podcast.
Announcer:Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now here is Dr. Mark French.
Mark French:Welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Hi, I'm your host, and I'm so happy you've joined me as I kind of started off with when I talk about a hot chemical process, what we're going to be talking about is the chemical reactions that require exceptional amounts of heat to make them work to make the process happen. And a new story caught my attention just recently that has to do with that and in a number of reasons that grabbed my attention. But I want to walk through an idea and a lot of assumptions. But I want to let it build into why a basic in robust safety program in safety system is necessary for companies why it is so important that we have these in place and why we do it. Let's go ahead and jump on. And the reason this caught my attention is I saw a a press release just a couple of days ago from the US Chemical Safety Board. And being a background in chemistry. Also in safety. The US Chemical Safety Board has produced some amazing investigations. I really, I can't attend say the word enjoy. I find them. Interesting because enjoyment would I don't like the fact that they're after the fact. They go in and they do a really strong analysis of what happened. What were the steps that led to this incident. And they make recommendations. They have no formal authority other than the recommendations. But they're very thorough, very well done. And generally speaking, we I don't think we learned enough from it. I don't think we use the knowledge that they put out to to be as powerful as it can be. What it caught my attention was that they were talking about a fatal fire that occurred at the right at the end of May. And it was in Chattanooga. And I think what startled me was I wasn't thinking of chemical industry in Chattanooga, and I'm not far from Chattanooga visited there a number of times and being kind of in the background. I'm familiar with hubs of different chemical plants. And usually when I see the Chemical Safety Board going somewhere, I recognize the name of the town or the area. This time it kind of shocked me to think wow, why are they going into Chattanooga for a chemical safety fire. So a fire from because of what happened with a chemical reaction? So I started looking for news stories about the incident. And what I found was and I will attach the links to if you're following me on my Facebook page or on LinkedIn, the first comment will be the links to the news stories. That way you can see what I'm seeing, like transparency. So a release from the Chattanooga fire department so they were responded to a commercial failure at 9am on the date was Thursday the 30th to be exact. Basically a chemical reaction started to fire. The employees extinguished the fire and attempted to help a co worker Once the firefighters arrived, they began eating the injured man assuring the fire was out. And one patient went to the hospital later died from the burns. I did a little research local, what chemical plant is this? What are what they do. And it's essentially a hardening process for metals. And it's called nitriding. And there's different ways to do it. And one of the ways that it can be done is through salt bath. So you put a very nitrogen rich salts into a solution and you bring it up to a really high temperature, and then you insert the metal pieces, and it bonds to make it harder to reinforce the really molecular structure of the metals to harden it up a little bit. And this nitrogen bath, this nitride salt bath, is run between 930 and 1165 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't have to say that's hot. I mean, that's really hot chemical solution. And if it gets outside of the system, it's either going to hurt equipment, or in this case, it started a fire and hurt an employee. And I did some very informal research to find some data that says that a human being can get a third degree burn within two seconds of coming in contact with with material that's 160 degrees Fahrenheit. So we're well past that we're talking instantaneous, deep tissue, severe burn. And there's a lot of questions here. And I'm not finding I'm sure I can't wait to see the Chemical Safety Board, also Tosha, the Tennessee OSHA group, they are going to be investigating, they also do a very nice job of investigations, it will be some time before we find out exactly what happened. I am curious though, there's a lot of things I become very curious about when I hear about something like this. And of course, I first went to the webpage of the I found the webpage of the company and they have a lot of different locations. I found it really interesting that they have so much data about their processes and what they can do. It was like a sell sheet. Here's everything we can do. They have all kinds of spec sheets, they tell you all about the work they're doing. And what made me kind of come is under about us. There were careers, but no leadership. So a lot of companies put like, Hey, here's the people who are leading us. Here's the leadership you can expect from us. Interesting. Not, couldn't really find it. Maybe I missed it. Good me. And the other part is like with a chemical company, you would want to see something that would tell me that they're environmentally or safety certified. Like that. They're trying like, Hey, we are, let's call it isO 14,001 Just for the sake of what we're talking about, or here's our even just a statement of environmental responsibility. Or here's what we're doing for the environment or here's, we believe in safety. We are we know we work with hazardous stuff. We believe in safety. And here's why. Even those generic statements are missing. I don't want to read too much into that I am not here to cast stones, even though it feels like it because we're looking at things in hindsight, in when you look at something in hindsight, when you're problem solving it after it happens. It feels absolutely it feels like you're pointing fingers you're in? Yeah, I've been on the other side of where there have been serious things that have happened. And I have to sit there and listen to the criticism of why didn't you Why didn't you? Why didn't you and a lot of them are valid. But I also know deep inside, I did everything I could at that time that I knew to do the right thing. So here's where I feel a little different is I because I'm not sure what the right thing is for this organization. So what is okay, what is their statement? What are their values? And I'm sure nobody wants to see someone get hurt or killed. But there's a difference between wanting it and morally and ethically saying no human should die in a workplace. There's a difference between saying and meaning in a way in your heart saying that's a terrible thing to happen. And the difference is did you go out and educate? Did you go out and find resources? Did you do the right things ahead of time to prevent it? It's one thing to say it's a terrible thing we don't want it to happen. It's a whole nother thing to put the effort in, to learn to adapt, and to find a way to prevent it. Let's talk a little bit more on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast.
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Mark French:Welcome back into the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So this week, we're talking about this chemical fire that occurred in the first questions I really come up with beyond prevention. Let's go. Let's step all the way and let's work backwards. Let's start with emergency management. I saw some pictures posted on X formerly known as Twitter of where the Chattanooga Fire Department responded and they took some pictures of their guys and their their hazmat boots and getting decontaminated from their boots. It tells me there was stuff on the ground there that the liquid had come out somewhere started a fire makes me wonder if we are hot material and some ignition source is available. Where was the separation? Where were worthy guidelines is the one piece of the prevention. The next one is that we the new story stated that employees extinguish the fire. My guess is this was beyond an incipient failure. Based on the injuries and based on the response could be wrong. But my guess is beyond incipient incipient means that it's very basic, very early stages of fire can be handled with a fire extinguisher. I'm sure fire extinguishers are probably used. I wonder. I mean, if it was more than that, have they trained fire brigade because that's what it takes a fully trained fire brigade, someone who knows how to command but then further on the statement of once they arrived, they begin ensuring the fire was out and began aiding the injured man. Not sure what the scene looked like when they arrived not sure the safety the background of first aid training that anyone had when they saw what happened to the individual. So what's the emergency response plan there? What was it? And I have a feeling when the investigation comes out? I'm curious to see that piece of it. Now. Let's go back to the next stage. How do you keep it in the pipes? What kind of preventative maintenance program what kind of safety systems I'm almost certain based on the size of it there probably not process safety management required, which is a whole system a whole subpart of the OSHA standard is performance based. This is how you handle chemicals. There's only certain chemicals and certain quantities of chemicals that that regulation covers. Beyond that it's all voluntary. It's all other pieces of the legislation. But there's so many good pieces of the process safety management standard that if you use it in use some of the best practices, it very much creates a safer environment. And in this case, what was their process for evaluating the risk of their process and the failures of the process and the nonconformances that could eventually lead to the problems. This site has no history of any other OSHA issues. So hopefully they had something but it's certainly something did not work the way it should. And wasn't procedures wasn't the process. Was it multi layers of what could have happened. And again, I go back and go what was the standard? What? What was the goal of this company? And of course now there's pictures of everywhere. And I'm so used to seeing industrial sites with safety slogans. Now whether or not they mean that they at least put it out there of safety slogans put out there that we care we do this where safety is number one thing them I don't see any thing and it goes back a lot to what I wonder from the webpage of not really talking about Leadership not talking about environmental being a chemical company, not talking about environmental stewardship, which I think has a lot says a lot right there. Because if you go to most chemical companies web pages somewhere, and usually right on the front page, you're going to find commitments to the environment. Because we know from the history of back in the days of the Better Living Through Chemistry, we kind of let them run wild. And I was wondering, I was a product of that I saw some of the textbooks that said, we can live better through chemistry, we can live better with these great things that these geniuses are coming up with. And I became a chemist, because I loved it, I thought it was amazing. But I also know that the environment was not one of their concerns at that time, some more, some more progressive enough, most weren't. And so now, it almost has to be where you make that statement of, hey, there is in we do care, we have a process, we have a methodology. And we're proud of that. And we want you to know that wherever we're at, we are going to be careful with our chemicals to make sure that we don't hurt our people, we don't hurt our community. It's as simple as that. And just not finding it. In this really a little bit of self promotion here of what is coming up. And it was very timely. And this really wasn't tied in until I really started thinking about how this podcast was going to lay out when I solved the story is coming up here in just a few days, I am going to be at the Tennessee safety conference, the topic that I'm presenting on is something I've been researching for a little while, and I'm very interested in and I'm still barely cracking the surface. And I'm calling it the crossroads. And it's the crossroads of safety. It's the crossroads of that the safety program in occupational environment is the crossroads. It's where physical and psychological safety meet. And you could have high or low of either one very, very basic categorization on my part, that if you have high physical safety, and high psychological safety, there's a functional program that's coming out of that if there's low psychological safety, and low physical safety, it's scary, super scary. And that's not the place that in modern day, industrial world, there should be a place allowed to be able to do that. Because you feel unsafe about your job, you feel unsafe about your work, you feel unsafe. You're braided at the job. And then when you come in, it's also really unsafe, and no one cares. And it's just a lack of care about all of it. And there's all in between. So there's the series of in betweens, I'm really looking forward to presenting some of the early items that I've done some research on that to understand, what do these organizations look like? And how do you categorize them? And how can you see them really quickly. And the first first piece of it that really stands out every time. And this is no surprise is leadership. What the leadership cares about is what will happen within the organization every time. And there's a lot of research that supports that. And so how do we build up leadership that understands they are controlling, not just the East West, but they're also controlling the north south. They control the entire intersection, and how they're going to direct their people how they're going to direct the flow is completely up to them. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So happy you've joined me really enjoyed chatting with you. And until next time we chat and stay safe.
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