OSHA News

Safety & Health Professionals Share Their Stories On Today's Occupational Safety & Health Professional Day

(May 09, 2007)-- Millions of people go to and return home safely from work every day due, in part, to the work of occupational safety, health and environmental professionals. Today, Occupational Safety and Health Professional Day (OSHP Day), American Society of Safety Engineers' past presidents look back at the profession, the changes and the future while saying thank you to the thousands of safety, health and environmental (SH&E) professionals committed to protecting people, property and the environment.

When asked what a safety professional is, ASSE Past President Don Eckenfelder, P.E., CSP, Glen Falls, NY, explained, "A safety professional is anyone who is attempting to make the world a better place by facilitating processes that reduce losses."

ASSE Past President Eddie Greer, CSP, TX, goes on to explain that, "We still have a long way to go in increasing workplace safety for all. Many women perished in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, yet even 80 years later we had 25 workers die and 49 more injured when a fire broke out at a chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. The plant doors were padlocked trapping the workers inside, similar to what happened in 1911. We are making a difference and workplace fatalities have gone down over the years, but we need to reach the businesses who don't have or ignore workplace safety and health processes."

"The truth is I prepared for a career in the diplomatic service and when my assignment came I thought it was ludicrous, because my BA was in Latin American affairs and Spanish and they wanted me to go to Bangkok, Thailand," ASSE Past President Margaret Carroll, P.E, CSP, Cedar Crest, NM, said. "Instead I took a safety and health job with the Boeing Company in New Orleans. I was so fascinated by the whole idea of industrial safety and the aspect that you would actually be interacting with people in trying to integrate these -- the technical knowledge into a work a day world was just intriguing to me and still is.

"If you repealed the OSH Act today it wouldn't make that much of a difference with the way employees act because now because safety is engrained in them. They know that they should know about material safety for example. They know they have the right to speak up when they think something isn't safe, it's a whole different ball game than it was 20 years ago," Carroll noted.

"I became a safety professional as kind of an experiment, oddly enough," ASSE Past President Frank Perry, P.E., CSP, of Houston, TX said. "I started out as an electrical engineer then joined a group at Texas A & M University, it was an experimental class with a safety engineering curriculum, so I got into the pilot program."

As for changes in the profession, Perry noted, "I think a lot of safety regulations and standards that we deal with have been written in blood, essentially, that a loss of life or injury such as the Bo Paul incident which brought the BSM standard for the process safety management, leads to these. This incident resulting in a catastrophic loss of life and being a U.S. company working internationally had resounding implications in the U.S. and resulted in the development of the OSHA process safety management standard.

"I let the people I worked with know that I truly cared about them as individuals and as a person," Perry said. "Then they would sit up and take notice and ... think about what they were doing, that they were doing, that we were dedicated, I was dedicated to their safety and health. Once I convinced them of that, that it was more than just a job, more than going through the motions, then they learned."

Former ASSE President Delmar Tally, P.E., CSP, noted, "When I was in Vietnam I headed up the safety program in South Vietnam. During that time period the aviation accident rate was cut in half during the combat operations in South Vietnam. I had a challenging safety job as the division safety manager in a combat environment. It was very important for every airplane that got shot down or that we lost due to non-combat operations, that meant one less airplane to conduct the war.

"During that time I flew 300 combat missions in five different South Vietnamese areas. Any time you're in a combat situation and you're trying to run a safety program it's extremely trying ... but extremely rewarding," Tally said.

Portland, Oregon native and former ASSE President David MacCollum, P.E., CSP, said, "When I was finishing college in Oregon I went to work in logging camps in the summer. I started out as a choker setter. The first summer I worked in the woods three men died in accidents, one man a month. It was very dangerous and serious business. However, I made it through so when I finished school I went up to Portland and met the head of the Industrial Accident Commission and soon I had a job with the State of Oregon as a safety engineer until I went to work for the Army Corps of Engineers.

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