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Good morning and thank you
for taking the time to learn about the safety ethic. I want to especially thank Dr. Carl Meyer
for the invitation to speak today. Its really ironic that I would be talking
about the safety ethic today. In my
early years as a chemist I learned very little about safety and I certainly
didn’t have a safety ethic. In fact I
didn’t know what a safety ethic was.
I experienced explosions, fires, and exposures to toxic chemicals, and
its probably a miracle that I’m alive today.
I remember one particular instance where I violated virtually every
basic chemical safety principle possible.
I was working with ether, had a flash fire that singed the hair from
an arm and eyebrows, and caught a 5-gal can of ether on fire. I guess I sort of look at this, and other
close calls, as a baptism of fire that taught me the importance of
safety. What I lacked safety in my
early years, I overcame as I began to realize what I didn’t know. In the end I became an avid believer and
leading proponent of safety. When I accepted his invitation I thought this
would be a pretty easy talk to put together, but instead I found this to be
quite a challenge. So let me begin by
talking about what safety ethic there has been among chemists in the past.
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