“What are the chances of that happening?” Each year, the National Safety Council attempts to answer that question with serious numbers. According to the latest report, your lifetime chances of getting killed in an airplane crash are actually 100,000 times less than...

Last year, every academic lab fatality that happened in the world happened in China, prompting concerns over the state of lab safety in the People’s Republic. The Laboratory Safety Institute’s memorial wall, a webpage that tracks lab deaths worldwide, lists three...

One silver lining of the pandemic was that since many school labs were closed, the science-experiment-gone-wrong stories also went on hiatus. For two straight years, there were no reported accidents from teacher-led classroom demonstrations—just a few stories of kids...

Flammable solvents and hot oil was always a combination that honestly scared me, but that was how I had been taught to perform reactions. As a keen cook, I knew never to put a hot pan of oil near water, yet in my former life as a chemist, that is precisely what I did...

“I am in too much grief to talk. What can I say? The work of half my lifetime, very nearly all my mechanical instruments and scientific apparatus, that it has taken years to perfect, swept away in a fire that lasted only an hour or two. How can I estimate the loss in...

"This is a zero-accident workplace." "Vision zero." "Our aim: no accidents." Safety-speak is full of zero-based slogans. We like zero, at least as an aspirational vision, because non-zero statements seem unconscionable. “Our goal is to kill only one or two people this...

Although the containers were clearly labeled “do not use for food,” and the product was dyed orange-pink as an additional danger flag, sadly, seed grain treated with methylmercury fungicide still made it onto the dinner tables of thousands of people. The official...

At one time, I thought that not dying was incentive enough to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Evidently, I was wrong. Dozens of states are offering sweepstakes worth millions of dollars for anyone who gets vaccinated. A stick in the arm can also get you Krispy Kreme...

Two workers died in a chemical explosion at a cannabis lab in Italy on May 7, raising questions about how to maintain high safety standards within a rapidly expanding industry. Samuel Cuffaro, 19, and Elisabetta D’Innocenti, 52, have become the latest additions to the...

Those who make a career in safety have two basic choices: Be a transformational leader who builds organizational culture in which health, safety and the environment are an integral and important part of life for everyone. Be that person with a clipboard, always on the...