"3 bales, each weighing at least 571 kilograms...one dead"

I was thrown out of plant once. I asked a customer why a young boy in t-shirt and shorts was pushing a broom between to operating casting pits. My host looked at me and said “@#&!, out with you.” Shortest visit I ever had. I suspect it was the tone of my voice or I caught my host in a bad mood. Either way my safety observation was based on death. Let me explain. Over the past decade I have written about the causes of over 800 incidents. Sadly, most involve death. Looking at that young man pushing a broom my mind was flooded with past molten metal incidents. A large number of fatalities involving molten metal occur when workers are not wearing fire proof clothing. I believe afterwards that my safety observations were relayed to my customer and the young man with the broom was given the proper ppe.

Prior to the pandemic I would visit dozens of aluminium plants on a yearly basis.

During each visit I would point out potential incidents. But, with the pandemic my traveling has been halted for the most part. Instead, I post comments on various LinkedIn posts that I observe a safety issue. I try to preface all my comments with “My comments are not intended to insult nor besmirch the worker(s) or the company”. I explain what safety issues I see in the photo or video posted. Overwhelmingly I have had positive responses. The most common issue I post about is companies who stack material too tall. The material varies from scrap, sows, finished product, etc. Some companies discount my observations with “we never had an incident before”. Not only is that a foolish answer, but it commonly has deadly consequences because they have a false safety belief.

False safety belief occurs overtime when a task or procedure is deemed safe mainly on the fact that no incidents have occurred.

It is only when an incident occurs that the investigation finds that the task or procedure was always dangerous and only by luck an incident did not occur beforehand.

I just posted another fatality today on the Aluminium Plant Safety Blog that I edit. I pray for the worker’s family, friends and coworkers. I pray that overtime that they will remember how their loved one lived and not how he died. I post this incident and every incident to honor the dead and pray and pray that I can prevent an incident from recurring.?

Here is the link to the incident: https://aluminiumplantsafety.blogspot.com/