Archive for the ‘Safety’ Category

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Legal note.

Wednesday, December 28th, 2011

The University of California and Dr. Patrick Harran, a chemistry professor at UCLA, have been charged with three felony counts of “willfully violating occupational health and safety standards”. Yes, you read that right: the University itself is being charged with felonies.

The charges stem from the death of Sheri Sangji in December of 2008. Ms. Sangji was employed in Dr. Harran’s lab:

Sangji was transferring up to two ounces of t-butyl lithium from one sealed container to another when a plastic syringe came apart in her hands, spewing a chemical compound that ignites when exposed to air. The synthetic sweater she wore caught fire and melted onto her skin, causing second- and third-degree burns.

She died 18 days after the incident.

I’m kind of hoping Derek Lowe will have some comment on this, and I’m willing to listen to arguments on the subject. My gut feeling is that the felony indictments are appropriate: Ms. Sangji should not have been working without a flame-resistant lab coat, and it isn’t clear to me that she was provided with appropriate equipment, training, or supervision. This is what trials are for, of course, and details may come out during the trial that will change my mind. But:

Two months before the fatal fire, UCLA safety inspectors found more than a dozen deficiencies in the same lab, according to internal investigative and inspection reports reviewed by The Times. The inspectors found that employees were not wearing requisite protective lab coats and that flammable liquids and volatile chemicals were stored improperly.

But the required corrective actions were not taken before the fatal fire, the records showed.

Edited to add: Many thanks to Chemjobber both for pointing us to Derek Lowe’s commentary, and for providing a link to an article from Chemical and Engineering News summarizing the incident in more detail.

Also, thanks to Lawrence for a somewhat related link, which we had missed: the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board report on the Texas Tech lab explosion in January of 2010. I swear that I covered the explosion at the time, or shortly afterwards, but I can’t find the link now. In any case, the report is pretty much what you’d expect: “the physical hazard risks inherent in the research were not effectively assessed, planned for, or mitigated; the university lacked safety management accountability and oversight; and previous incidents with preventative lessons were not documented, tracked, and formally communicated”.

(Short summary: the lab was working on a government project involving detection of explosives. Part of their work involved making something called nickel hydrazine perchlorate, which goes bang rather easily. The lab had been making small amounts (100 milligrams) but the students involved in the production of NHP that day decided, for various reasons, to scale things up and produce about 10 grams. The NHP went bang while one of the students was trying to break up “clumps” in a mortar and pestle.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Explosives, Geek, Law, Safety | 1 Comment »

Important medical news.

Wednesday, December 21st, 2011

…51-year-old woman in the state died after she was infected with the “brain-eating” amoeba Naegleria fowleri, which enters the body through the nose and sometimes causes devastating meningitis. Apparently, the amoeba lurked in tap water the woman used in her neti pot, a pitcher-like device used to rinse nasal passages.

This is why I only use single-malt scotch in my Neti pot. (Mixing it with Mountain Dew is optional.)

Posted in Clippings, Neuroscience, Safety, Sarcasm | 2 Comments »

Important safety tip (#8 in a series).

Monday, November 7th, 2011

If you dine out, in a sit-down restaurant, where someone actually brings food to your table, you should leave a reasonable tip.

I’m generally on the side of 15% as a base, though what I do in practice is double the sales tax. (Local sales tax around Austin is generally 8.25%, so that’s actually 16.5%.) I will tip 20% or 25% if I have a good reason to. I’m not as bothered by an 18% mandatory gratuity on large parties as I used to be; if the definition of a large party meets mine (five people is not large; seven+ is) and if they go above and beyond in some way (splitting the ticket six or seven ways for a party of seven, to me, justifies at least 18%).

In any case, I strongly recommend against a 200%+ tip, especially if you’re on an expense account.

Because if you’re on an expense account and turn in a receipt that shows you tipped the waitress at Hooter’s $24.52 for a mushroom cheeseburger that cost $7.48, somebody in the accounting department is going to ask questions. And eventually they’re going to find out that you tipped the waitress $24.52 to cover your bar tab, since your city expense account doesn’t cover alcohol.

(The heck of it is, I think the city policy is unreasonable. It doesn’t bother me that much for a couple of off-duty cops dining out of town to have a beer or two with their meals, and have the city pay for it. As long as they don’t get messed up and embarrass the city, say, by having the waitress pose with their patrol rifle, I don’t get hot and bothered by adults having a beer. But if they knew city policy was otherwise, and they lied about it because they were too cheap to pay their own bar tab, yeah, fire their butts.)

(If you’re not on an expense account, the above doesn’t apply to you. Feel free to tip the waitress 200%. Or 300%. Or 500%. But keep in mind; she’s not going to sleep with you, no matter how much you tip her.)

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Food, Law, Safety, Stupid | Comments Closed

Important safety tips (#6 and #7 in a series).

Friday, October 7th, 2011

Number 6: Be very careful using the “reply to all” button in your email client. Indeed, I question the wisdom of even having a self-destruct button “reply to all” button in email clients. You may laugh, but I have seen far too many cases where the “reply to all” button functions very much like a self-destruct button.

Number 7: There are certain words you should probably avoid putting in a professional email. I’m sure everyone has their own list, but I’m also pretty sure that if we merged all of our lists together, “f-cking” and “b-tch”, as well as the conjugate “f-cking b-tch” would be there.

No reason really. Just thought I’d point these out.

(Hattip: Ken over at Popehat.)

Posted in Safety, Schadenfreude | Comments Closed

Important safety tip (#5 in a series).

Friday, August 12th, 2011

If you’re going to sell “lobster salad” in your store, it is a very good idea to make sure that your “lobster salad” contains actual lobster.

No, I’m not convinced by the argument that crawfish is close enough to lobster for it to count.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Lobsters, Safety, Sarcasm | 5 Comments »

Important safety tip. (#4 in a series)

Monday, February 14th, 2011

It has been said before, but apparently it needs to be said again.

Don’t put anything into an email that you would not want to see on the front page of your local newspaper.

This is especially true if your local newspaper is the LAT.

You may ask, what brings this on? I’m glad you did.

Remember Randy Adams? Former police chief of Glendale, California, who took a job as police chief of the city of Bell, at a much higher salary, while at the same time negotiating his disability pay from the city of Bell?

The LAT reprints some choice quotes from emails between Chief Adams and assistant city administrator Angela Spaccia. Quotes such as:

“I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money”.

and

“LOL … well you can take your share of the pie … just like us!!! We will all get fat together … Bob [Rizzo] has an expression he likes to use on occassion … Pigs get Fat ….. Hogs get slaughtered!!!! So long as we’re not Hogs…All is well!?“

As the LAT notes, the “Bob” in the above quote is Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, former city administrator.

Speaking of Ratso, I meant to note this last week, but it got past me: Bell’s city clerk says that Ratso ordered her to give out false information about his salary, and the salaries of the city council members. Also worthy of note: the clerk testified under a grant of limited immunity. (“Use immunity”, which prevents the DA from using her testimony against her. That doesn’t mean she can’t be prosecuted if the DA finds evidence other than her testimony to use against her. I am not your lawyer, and neither is Wikipedia, but here’s a link that explains the difference between “use immunity” and “transactional immunity”.)

Edited to add: Slightly longer version of the story here.

Posted in Clippings, Politics, Safety | Comments Closed

Important safety tip. (#3 in a series)

Monday, January 31st, 2011

This has been said many times, in many places, but I think it bears repeating for reasons that I’ll illustrate shortly:

GPS systems are a guide and a tool. They are not absolutely perfect. They are human designed systems that can fail.

Also, no matter how insistent that voice is, and no matter how often it says “Recalculating”, your GPS system is not the boss of you. You are the person in control of the vehicle; you have the option to ignore it, mute it, or even throw it out the window. (I even know one person who took a perverse enjoyment in tormenting their car’s GPS system by driving in circles.)

Several things bring this to mind. Some folks who were attending Saturday’s SDC found that their GPS systems were showing a location for Korean Grill that was quite a bit off from the actual location. (By the way, Korean Grill is a pretty darn spiffy place; I recommend giving it a shot.) On Sunday, we had a similar experience trying to find the Gruene Door; somehow, we ended up in a residential area several hundred feet behind the Gruene Door, and more or less stumbled on the restaurant through pure luck. (Also: the Gruene Door was fantastic. I’d like to go back sometime soon.)

And then there’s this story from the Sacramento Bee:

“It’s what I’m beginning to call death by GPS,” said Death Valley wilderness coordinator Charlie Callagan. “People are renting vehicles with GPS and they have no idea how it works and they are willing to trust the GPS to lead them into the middle of nowhere.”

And then they get stuck in the middle of nowhere in 120 degree heat where there’s no cell phone service and wind up drinking their own urine to survive. Or just simply vanish until someone stumbles across their remains in the desert.

It does seem like there may be a little more to this than just GPS failures. (Why aren’t closed roads better marked? Perhaps with a big sign: “ROAD CLOSED. IF YOU GO PAST THIS POINT YOU WILL DIE.“) But the main problem still seems to be blind trust in a technology that can fail.

(Unfortunately, I can’t find a YouTube clip of the Hill Street Blues episode where Joyce Davenport lectures one of her clients on desert survival techniques. Too bad, because she’s actually got some pretty sound advice to offer.)

Posted in Clippings, Food, GPS, Safety, SDC | 3 Comments »

Important safety tip. (#2 in a series)

Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

A gun is a gun. It is designed to shoot things.

A gun is not an all purpose tool. A gun is not a club. A gun is not a prybar. A gun is not a bottle opener (the Galil aside). A gun is not a tool for breaking out windows.

Bad things can happen when you use your gun for things other than shooting. For example, if you use your gun to club someone (no matter how deserving) you may mar the finish. Blood does awful things to a gun’s finish, especially the beautiful bluing on older Smith and Wesson revolvers.

Hitting things with your gun can also bend parts. Then your gun won’t go off when you need for it to go off. As the great Peter Hathaway Capstick once said, “The most terrifying sound in nature is not the roar of a charging lion, nor the whistle of a descending bomb; rather it is a click when you expect a bang.”

But the worst thing that can happen is that your gun might go off when you don’t want to go off. (I’d almost be willing to argue with Capstick that the sound of a “bang” when you expect a “click” is even more terrifying. However, I haven’t spent much of my life hunting lion and elephant in Africa, more’s the pity.) For example, when you’re breaking out a car window.

An Humble police officer had apprehended two fleeing car burglary suspects in a stolen truck. One of the suspects, whose identity has not been released, was accidentally shot to death by the police officer, who used his duty weapon to break the passenger window of the stolen truck, Humble police said.

Bad move, space cadet. (Edited to add: Just to make it clear for my readers outside Texas, “Humble” in this case is a city near-ish to Houston, not a description of the police officer.)

But two police tactical experts said the action taken by the Humble police officer is not common practice and is not taught in police academies.

“I’d hate to be in his pants right now,” said retired Houston police Sgt. Frank C. Miller, who taught tactical procedures to Houston Police Department narcotics officers for more than 20 years.

“From a tactical standpoint, it was very risky. Good arrest, shaky tactic — but, you know, they pulled it off. But the (suspect) died, unfortunately. Those things happen. (The suspect) was the bad guy — I don’t feel sorry for him.”

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Safety, Stupid | 3 Comments »

Important safety tip.

Friday, July 23rd, 2010

If you’re going to cheat, don’t be stupid about it. Try to show at least a little intelligence.

I draw my example today from the L.A. County Sheriff’s Office, which has a bit of a problem. LACSO wants deputies in the jail to check on the inmates regularly, just to make sure none of them have decided to hang themselves, or are getting beaten to death by Bubba. So they have a system of bar code scanners around the jail; deputies are supposed to use those scanners to scan their assigned bar code as they make their rounds.

But the county Office of Independent Review reported that investigators found some deputies had copies of the codes on sheets of paper. Instead of doing the rounds, the deputies scanned the codes at their desks.

How did they discover this? Well, one of the inmates killed himself, and records showed that a deputy had been making his regular rounds. When the investigators dug a little deeper into the records…

…they discovered that computer records showed the deputy scanned several parts of the jail in 35 seconds — a physical impossibility.

…

As they investigated further, officials found that the deputy who was on duty during the suicide also went to the staff gym and made a “chow run” to a nearby restaurant on the day of the suicide when he should have been making his rounds, the report says.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Safety, Stupid | Comments Closed

Important safety tips.

Monday, December 14th, 2009

If you are planning to go into the offices of a financial advisor armed with a gun, it is a good idea to load the gun first.

It is also a good idea to leave the wine glass and wine bottle in the car; you know, so you have both hands free to load the damn gun.

Lawrence points out that Triton Financial, the firm in question, has a somewhat interesting history. (See also.)

Posted in Guns, Law, Loser, Safety | 2 Comments »

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