Episode 202: Real Safety

In this episode of Leading and Learning Through Safety, Dr. Mark French examines a tragic news story out of Michigan involving two young workers who lost their lives due to hydrogen sulfide exposure while performing well maintenance. What initially appears to be a confined space incident reveals something deeper: a failure of basic training, hazard recognition, and rescue preparedness.

The workers were using hydrochloric acid to descale a residential well located beneath a porch — a clear permit-required confined space. The chemical reaction likely produced hydrogen sulfide gas, a highly toxic and deadly substance. One worker entered the well and was overcome. A second worker, acting instinctively to save his colleague, entered without protective equipment and also succumbed. Three others were hospitalized.

Dr. French unpacks the layered safety breakdowns: lack of hazard communication training, absence of confined space protocols, no engineered rescue system, and a culture of comfort built on years without incident. The absence of injury, he reminds listeners, does not equal safety — it often equals luck.

This episode challenges leaders to look “between the lines” of tragic headlines and ask critical questions: What was present before? What assumptions were made? What systems were missing? True safety is deliberate, verified, and practiced — not assumed.

A powerful reminder that preparation, training, and leadership are what stand between routine work and irreversible loss.

Transcript

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This week on the podcast, we're looking at a tragedy from the news, and it's all about confined spaces, but not really as much a confined space as it's about basic learning, training and being prepared. Let's look at this on the podcast. 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, welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So happy you've joined me. Really appreciate being part of your podcast rotation. In this week, I'm moving into a little bit different direction, kind of more of my traditional direction, where there was a news story that just grabbed me, and I want to talk about that news story I know, in the past few episodes, we've really looked at journals and some of the ideas and new theories and new research that are out there, and looked at that from leadership and safety perspective. This week, back to the unfortunate part of safety news, which is usually 99% never good, but it's eye opening, and very important that we talk about some of these and try to understand the best we can what happens. And anytime we're talking about items like this and news stories. We never have the full picture yet that investigation has to ultimately run. But in this case, this is reported out of Michigan, and it was stationed W, X, Y, Z, reported it and did a nice job of giving information and doing their journalistic duty. And of course, it's not good news, and to talk about that is tough, and we make a lot of assumptions. Now we'll make assumptions here to talk about what I think happened, and I'll read between the lines. And that's where the real important items really come from, is when we think about the in between, what else was present, what was present before, and what will change after, those are the real total questions that help us figure out and improve what we do every day. So in this case, it was a 20 year old and a 21 year old died from hydrogen sulfide gas. They were working on a well. They were part of a plumbing well company that did work, and they were working on a well that was under the porch of a house in Michigan. And three were hospitalized. Two were dead because of this, they are working with with hydrogen chloride, hydrochloric acid, to clean what it looks like the scale, and clean this well and repair it and put it back into any shape, which is common. When you look at some of the drain cleaners, drain items, you're going to find a pretty strong acid in those items. And they can react with different minerals, different items, especially when it comes to like biologicals. They can connect in gas off. And in this case, it made hydrogen sulfide, which is very, very strong smelling, but also exceptionally deadly. And of course, what would this be? It's a permit required confined space going down inside a well is no doubt, right there, you're looking at confined space entry, then you're using a harsh chemical. And so right now I'm looking at two regulations. That I unfortunately don't think in don't feel that were even talked about. If there was any safety training, I'm not sure this company did any type of training. I don't have any employees. It has. They don't really name the company, but there's a lot of photos, and you can see some of the logos in the photos. And so we're looking at hazard communication for one like, When can you use this acid? Hydrochloric acid? Because when I think of hydrochloric acid, I immediately go into my years of chemistry. We used hydrochloric for a lot of things. It's a very universal, very useful lab chemical, also in the in in normal use, especially in plumbing, de scaling, hydrochloric and weak solutions. Is also very powerful. It works exceptionally well, but you have to there are very, very strong precautions that have to be taken, and that's what that has come the hazard communication, safety data sheets, that is what it was created for. That is the entire reason that we have that standard, and have had that standard for a long time, is that everyone has the right to be able to know what they're working with and how to work with it safely in the first aid required if something happens, simple as that, and we don't think about these chemicals, we think that because we could maybe go to Lowe's Home Depot, plumbing store, whatever, and buy it that, oh, well, then it's not something I have to train on. Not true, especially if you're going to be using it in a very industrial fashion, which it appears whatever they were using was definitely industrial fashion. And it may have been a very strong commercial grade cleaner. Either way, there should have been some training on the hazards. Now, when we read into the story, it appears that one that the one that was doing the entry, the young man that was doing the entry, had worked there for a while, had been an employee, I mean, not exceptionally long, very young person, but had worked there for a while, and probably had been familiar with doing this and probably had done it before. I would have to think that if he's going down and doing this entry by himself, there was a level of comfort of going down into this well with this chemical, because it had been done before and it had been done safely. That's my thought. Because we become very comfortable with with this very soon. And if you've never again, if you've never worked around these chemicals, if you've never had to deal with them, you don't know and so you have to rely on your boss, your supervisor and your co workers to educate you on the dangers. Now, ultimately, it's the company's responsibility to train now, again, maybe they're so small they don't fall under the OSHA jurisdiction, which is unfortunate that this can happen, that there's no law protecting this. It's only the goodwill of a person not wanting people to die, as a leader, as an owner, that would possibly train on this or teach. And then we have the peers. Maybe there was older people that had been around this around and had taught him to do this. And evidently they had had years of success of doing this without any issue, because it appears, and if my inclination would be right, they've done it for years this way. They taught him to do it, and then he got comfort, comfortable with the hazard, and continue to do it. And so what we we begin with here is a permit required confined space entry down into a well confined space, doing cleaning with hydrochloric acid that reacts and creates hydrogen sulfide, which is a quickly engulf It's suffocating, very hard to get away from. And again, I say again, because I feel like I've talked about this a lot, but this is the first time on this episode I'm talking about it the confined space standard when we look at it from origination and why it was created was for rescue. Of course, there's a big piece of prevention, hopefully you never need the rescue. But ultimately, if something happens, how do we get someone out as fast as we can and begin emergency measures, or get them away from the issue. Or ultimately, how do we rescue? How do we get that person out of the hazard? And this is a key point of this article that will continue into because the rescue portion, not only was the entry. Be the hascom, the rescue portion didn't exist. Probably never had existed, and I want to talk about that next on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, you are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French, TS, da consulting, learn you lead others. The Myers, Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. Problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building, stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more, individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at TS da consulting.com, so let's continue our journey into this terrible incident. We have a plumber, well person doing this work going down into a well under a porch to do some maintenance, descaling, cleaning something with fairly concentrated hydrochloric acid gas is off to make hydrogen sulfide, no means of rescue, comfortable with the hazard. And so what they did have was someone there spotting, handing stuff in, I don't know, a helper. So the 21 year old is in the well, there's a 20 year old outside, sees it happening, probably smells it happening, and the decision was made to go in after him. And in the case of confined space entry in significant chemical hazards such as this, rescue is not a second person going in without any type of equipment, and this is how it ended up with two fatalities. One young person in there with the issue happening, another one wanting to do the very best thing they can do and try to save their co worker, save maybe someone they consider a friend, and they go in after them, and also succumb to the fumes the other people who were around needed to be hospitalized because of the gas. Rescue workers had to take time to vent and put on the right PPE to go in, probably level a self contained breathing to go in to retrieve, unfortunately, what were just bodies? Why does something like this happen? And we back up, like I said, we back up to look at the chain of events. And I've alluded to this a little bit already, of I can picture it as those have been around the safety field for a while. You can see this. There's there's a service. They are doing it. They feel like they're pretty comfortable with the hazards. They teach other people to do it. They never see an incident, never even see a near miss, never have any issues, or if they do it's minor, they kind of laugh it off. And they teach another group to do it that way, and they get so comfortable doing it that way, that they never think that there could be something wrong. And here, the absence of injury, the absence of incident, does not equal safety. It equals luck. Safety is a deliberate action, and I've I'm here, I hear this a lot. We've never had an injury, we've never had a loss, we've never had an incident. Doesn't mean you're safe. Tell me about the the programs you have, tell me about the observations you have, tell me about the audits you're doing. Tell me about how you verify safety. Verification of safety is not the lack of injuries or the lack of incidents. That's luck, because if I was to tell anyone Hey, I'm going to go work with hydrochloric acid, I would think there would need to be some kind of training or some kind of notification of how to use it the right way, not just like, hey, don't get it in your eyes. Okay, don't drink it. No, there's, there's things that we need to know. Hey, you're going to go down that confined space. If your friend, something happens to your friend, you call 911, you don't go in after them. Or, even better, here's a mechanical winch. Push the button, it automatically pulls them right out again. They're going to be suited up in a harness, and if something happens, you hit the button, they come back out again. You don't have to go in after but to look at how long it took responders. To have to gear up to go in. This was a significant gas. This was a significant chemical event under someone's house that hurt a lot of people and killed two. And why for standards and for reasons that have been around and could be avoided, and we go back in the past again. We're comfortable with the hazard. We're trained to do the hazard. We're young. We don't have been again. I use the phrase of common sense is only common to you if you've been exposed to it. I went to school for chemistry. Certain chemicals scare me. But if I had never done that, if no one had ever told me, Hey, Mark, that's a dangerous chemical you're playing with right there, I'm gonna tell a story of my highest No, actually, middle school science teacher. He was telling a story about when he was a kid, he was playing with with matches, and he accidentally lit his like yard on fire when his parents weren't home. And the only thing he could think of is he knew that his parents had told him that something that kerosene, had something to do with fire. So he decided to take the risk of maybe it was the fire, put her outer versus the fire accelerant, and he poured kerosene on and he learned at that moment that kerosene was flammable, because all he knew was kerosene did something to fire, and maybe it was put it out that. And he was a very smart man, but his common sense level was only common to what he had been taught. So common sense is really not exactly common. It's actually something that has to be learned, experienced, taught in some form or fashion at some point in your life. And so going into this Well, with this chemical was a normal thing. There was nothing that rang the bell that said, this is hazarded, this is dangerous. This could kill me, and we've had so many successes beforehand, there's no way something bad could happen. And that's the recipe for the disaster. And to have a second person looking outside and going, Oh no, something went catastrophically wrong in a big way, we've got a big problem now I'm going to go in and save my friend. I only the one, the one thing I have is my I need to act in that action, because I have no other frame of reference is to go in and try to pull them out and save their life, because I haven't been trained any different, because I don't have the equipment to do it different, because I don't have the means to do it any different. And that's the core of fundamental leadership and being part of a real safety program, and it doesn't even if you're not required by law to have it, it's just doing the right thing. Because we're human beings. It's that idea of we we understand, and we teach the hazard. We teach it the right way. We have the right equipment to do the job the right way. And we follow up to make sure our team understands how to do it the right way. It's unfortunate that these types of events continue to happen, and we keep working as a safety profession to try to get better at it. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, I appreciate you taking this this journey with me as we looked between the lines of this news story. Until next time we chat, stay safe. You. Matt, thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot tsda consulting.com all the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice you i This has been the leading and learning through. Safety podcast.