OSHA announces winners of “Picture It: Safe Workplaces for Everyone” photo contest
Dec 01, 2011, WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) today announced the winners of its first ever photo contest to raise public awareness of occupational safety and health.
In celebration of its 40th anniversary, OSHA held the Picture It!: Safe Workplaces for Everyone photo contest. The contest challenged anyone with a passion for photography to capture an image of workplace safety and health and share it with OSHA. At the same time, OSHA held a second contest challenging OSHA staff to submit their images of workplace safety and health. Some of the photographs are shown below.
This is the first prize winning one. It shows workers on a beach cleaning up after the infamous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It was submitted by Aaron Sussell, Cincinnati, Ohio.
The one below got the second prize.
This one below got the third prize, it shows a machine shop operator working on a machine using proper personal protective equipment.
The one below shows a gas monitor being used for entering a confined space and it clearly shows the expected reading before one would enter. This one got an honorable mention.
All the six winning photographs, and seven honorable mentions, can be viewed at http://www.osha.gov/osha40/photo-winners.html.
“I am thrilled by the way these photographers have so creatively captured the challenges of workplace safety and health,” said Dr. David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, expressing his enthusiasm for the overwhelming response to the contest and the quality of the submissions. “Each winning photograph tells its own powerful story of the contribution of workers to our great country’s success, and America, and of the vital importance of protecting their health and safety. I am deeply grateful to everyone who contributed their time and talent to this contest.”
Aaron Sussell, of Cincinnati, Ohio, was selected from more than three hundred submissions as the first-place winner of the public contest for his compelling photograph of workers involved in last summer’s cleanup of the Gulf Oil Spill. “This is a great captured moment that tells the story of workplace safety,” said Kathleen Klech, Photography Director, Condé Nast Traveler Magazine and Photo Contest judge.
Second-place winner Roberto Carlos Vergara, of Charlotte, North Carolina, was lauded for the otherworldly display of light and shadow in his photograph; set high above the clouds, the photograph emphasizes the importance of the fall protection equipment that each worker in the frame wears. Roberto Rodriguez of Mesquite, Texas, placed third for his image of a worker safely operating a machine in the midst of a visually active factory floor.
The winner of the OSHA staff contest is Elena Finizio, who works in OSHA’s Braintree, Massachusetts Area Office. Ms. Finizio’s photograph of the eerie glow of molten metal as workers pour a casting was praised for its “visual drama” by photojournalist and contest judge Earl Dotter. Steve Baranowski, also of OSHA’s Braintree, Massachusetts Area Office, was awarded second place in the internal contest for his vivid portrayal of an OSHA compliance officer at work. Frank Wenzel of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries placed third for his dizzying image of wind turbine construction.
Several honorable mentions were also awarded to photographers whose work will be featured on the contest Web page. They are Koralie Hill of Oakland, California; Roy Berke of Sacramento, California; Paul Navarette of Riverside, California; Wally Reardon of Pulaski, New York; and Jorge Intriago of Columbia, South Carolina from the public contest; and Keith Tsubata of the Hawaii Department of Labor and Industrial Relations and McClelland Davis of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries from the OSHA staff.
The winners will receive framed certificates from Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis (first prize) and Dr. Michaels (second and third prizes). All six winning photographs will be framed and hung in the Department of Labor’s headquarters at the Frances Perkins Building in Washington, D.C., where they will serve as daily reminders of the real-life impacts of OSHA’s mission. Winners were selected by an expert panel of judges that included Mr. Dotter; Carl Fillichio, the Department of Labor’s Senior Advisor for Communications and Public Affairs; Kathleen Klech, photography director for Condé Nast Traveler magazine; and Shawn Moore, the chief photographer for the Department of Labor. OSHA extends its thanks to these judges for their generosity and their critical expertise.
This contest was a great way to improve awareness of industrial safety amongst the public at large.
Fieldbus and Safety Instrumented Systems-implementing Safety Instrumented Functions in Fieldbus
Miami Dec 19, 2011- There has been a lot of buzz lately about Safety Instrumented Systems utilizing Fieldbus technology, or rather having Fieldbus systems also have Safety Instrumented System functionality. As those of you in the process industries probably know, Safety Instrumented Systems are special automation and control systems that ensure that plants having hazardous processes will be adequately protected and can be shut down safely in case of any process upsets or untoward incidents. Safety Instrumented Systems protect people, assets and the environment, in case of unwanted deviations, failures of the main process control system or equipment and other undesirable and unplanned events. Safety Instrumented Systems (known as SIS for short) are also called by other names such as Safety Shutdown Systems, Emergency Shutdown Systems (ESD) and similar terms.
Till recently, the SIS and the main plant automation systems (also known as BPCS-Basic Process Control Systems, which could be DCS or PLC based systems) used to be completely separate systems. The hardware, software and programming of both systems (BPCS and SIS) used to be totally different, like chalk and cheese. Later on, we began to see the introduction of integrated BPCS-SIS systems, where the BPCS and SIS were not totally different, but shared some of the hardware, user interface, communications network, etc. Though the programming was similar, the SIS programming was kept secure and separate with the aid of special functions in software.
Now we are seeing an even more integrated approach, in Fieldbus systems. For example FOUNDATION Fieldbus (which is one of the many Fieldbus protocols in use today) has introduced special Safety Instrumented Functions, that could be implemented in FOUNDATION Fieldbus based systems. They call this FF-SIF and this concept was presented in the FOUNDATION Fieldbus general assemby held sometime back. It is being done in a pilot project in Saudi Aramco at their Dhahran site. FOUNDATION Fieldbus recently announced that updated device development solutions for its Foundation Fieldbus for Safety Instrumented Functions (FF-SIF) technology are available. The new release includes the FF-SIF Technical Specification, Foundation for SIF Interoperability Test Kit (SIF ITK), and DD Library.
As many of you know, Fieldbus technology is rapidly gaining ground in the process industries and if the FF-SIF concept is accepted by user industries, it will lend a new meaning to the word “integrated” BPCS-SIS. In fact the distinction will get blurred. What FF-SIF proposes is to have Safety Instrumented Function blocks that will be resident in the smart devices in the field (like a humble pressure transmitter for instance) and thus can be used to implement Safety functions.This means that plants who decide to implement Fieldbus even on a smaller scale can have the power of a Safety Instrumented System, without paying a steep price for creating a separate system, programming, wiring, etc,etc. All they have to do is to utilize the SIF blocks that will presumably be available. Since the user industries main aim is to implement Safety functions in an effective manner, this seems to be a good deal for them.
If all this sounds like being too complicated, you need not worry. Simply download the Fieldbus training course from Abhisam Software that we hear is being released in Q1 of 2012 and you will be fine, fully updated and conversant with all this new technology.
Du Pont fined $750,000 by the NJ Department of Environmental Protection
Dec 12, 2011, Washington DC- It appears that DuPont may be fined $750,000 by the The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, says a report published by WDEL. The fine is for more than 60 violations of safety and environmental standards at a facility near the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
Apparently some hazardous substances were improperly handled and discharged at its Chambers Works facility in Salem County.
In 2006, DuPont was fined $105,000 after the department investigated more than 220 chemical spills at the site. In addition to the fine, the company must also furnish a plan to improve chemical handling procedures at the facility.
It was not clear how the quantum of the fine was decided.
Stuxnet-implications for industrial safety in plants using PLC, SCADA or DCS
Oct 18, 2010- Now with the advent of the Stuxnet, the world’s first known computer system worm, meant only to target industrial control systems, plant safety managers should sit up and take notice. Upto now you had to bother about fires, explosions, worker safety violations, legal permits and these kind of issues. Very soon you may have to worry about computer worms attacking plant control systems and wreaking havoc.
The Stuxnet worm that began appearing sometime reportedly in April of this year is designed apparently to only target industrial control systems made by Siemens. These include SCADA software like WinCC and the SIMATIC programming tools that are used to configure and program PLCs of the S7 series.
First a brief backgrounder for those who are not much aware of modern industrial control systems-PLCs are short for Programmable Logic Controllers and SCADA is shortform for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems. DCS is shorthand for Distributed Control Systems. It was always known that a virus or worm could potentially infect an industrial control system but this threat largely remained ignored because
a) No apparent benefit could accrue to any unethical hacker/cracker or similar person by writing malicious code for industrial computers
b) Since many of these systems are isolated from the internet, they are safe.
Turns out both these assumptions were totally wrong.Apparently some criminal or similar elements did write malicious code targeting DCS/PLC/SCADA systems and it did not matter that these systems were isolated from the internet. The infections were spread from USB drives!
Reports indicate that Stuxnet may have infected upto a hundred such industrial systems in India, China, Iran and even Germany. Initial analysis of the code indicates that it is specifically targeted towards Siemens systems and behaves in the following manner
a) It tries to identify the host. If it is a Siemens system it begins its work. Some experts say that it tries to capture control of the plant by infecting the PLCs and RTU (remote terminal units) and other controllers that control motors, pumps and valves. It then tries to change setpoints, modify programs and interlocks and generally can cause a lot of unexplained behavior of equipment
b) If the host is not a Siemens system, it does nothing-it lies dormant
c) It has a Kill switch- a date set out in 2012 after which it will self destruct.
The whole possibilities of such worm are horrible to contemplate! So sit up and take notice, do something! Do not confine your work to just enforcing personal safety such as wearing of helmets by personnel and taking permits for hazardous work. Lookout for hidden threats like Stuxnet-they have the potential to cause disasters far worse than what could be caused by human error.
Comments are welcome below.
CSB Board Member Mark Griffon Calls on American Society of Mechanical Engineers to Adopt CSB Recommendation Prohibiting Natural Gas Blows at Power Plants
Phoenix, Arizona, September 21, 2010—U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) Member Mark Griffon today called on the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) to adopt a CSB recommendation calling for natural gas blows to be prohibited during power plant construction.
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The recommendation was one of 18 urgent recommendations issued in June 2010 following a CSB investigation into a powerful natural gas explosion that killed six workers and injured dozens of others at the Kleen Energy plant in Middletown, Connecticut on February 7, 2010, which was under construction. Workers used hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of natural gas to clean debris from gas pipes used to fuel electricity-producing turbines. The gas accumulated in and around the buildings, was ignited by an unknown ignition source, and exploded.
Speaking to a meeting of ASME members in Phoenix who are considering changes to the ASME Code for Pressure Piping Systems, Mr. Griffon said, “The CSB believes that using natural gas or other flammable gases to clean fuel gas piping is inherently unsafe and should be prohibited.” He cited other accidents to show that explosions resulting from flammable gas blows have the potential of causing death, serious injuries, and costly property damage.
Mr. Griffon noted that the practice of using gas blows, or forcing large volumes of flammable gas through piping to clear out debris, was common in construction of electric generating facilities. The CSB investigation of Kleen Energy, resulting in 18 urgent recommendations, states “From a fire and explosion perspective, releasing large volumes of natural gas in the vicinity of workers or ignition sources is inherently unsafe.”
In remarks prepared for the ASME, which is considering the CSB recommendation to prohibit gas blows and use inherently safer methodologies to clean piping, Board Member Griffon said, “It has been argued that the gas blow at Kleen Energy was not conducted properly to ensure the dispersion of the released natural gas and to prevent the gas from encountering ignition sources. This point overlooks the simple fact that cleaning piping with flammable gases presents an inherent explosion hazard. Cleaning piping with flammable gases presents an explosion hazard that cannot be wholly eliminated.”
Even if every effort is made to eliminate ignition sources, such as welding, or electrical equipment not rated for a hazardous environment, he noted, the friction of the gas flowing through the piping can cause an accumulation of static electricity and cause ignition; in addition, sparks from impacts of metal debris striking surfaces when the gas exits the piping can also ignite the gas.
Mr. Griffon noted the CSB investigation found ample alternatives to gas blows which are safer. These methods include blowing air or nitrogen through piping, or by “pigging,” in which a cleaning device is propelled through the pipe using air.
Board Member Griffon noted that that some in industry have already eliminated gas blows. He said that a representative of General Electric, a major gas turbine manufacturer, stated at the CSB public meeting in June that his company greatly discourages gas blows and did not know of any situation where using gas to clean pipes was necessary. The company official said GE wants to “make gas blows something that will not happen again under GE’s watch.” GE also expressly prohibits its own employees from being on site if one of its customers chooses to conduct a blow with natural gas.
Since the public meeting, several other major turbine manufacturers also have reported to the CSB that they already have, or intend to soon develop, guidance that strongly advises their clients away from the practice of natural gas blows.
