Safety Day 2007
Yesterday (9/27/2007) was Safety Day at Honeywell's Morristown site. I reported on last year's Safety Day in a previous article that contained an interesting Einstein anecdote. Safety Day has been an annual event at Morristown for about twenty years, and it's marked by guest lectures on safety and some free time to clean your laboratory. One of the day's speakers was Robert Siciliano [1], who talked about personal safety and internet security. Honeywell has an excellent safety record, and there is a deep safety culture at the Morristown site. This Morristown safety culture was established many years ago, since the Morristown Headquarters is the legacy location of the Allied Chemical corporate laboratories.
Because of the human psyche, there's a tiered structure to our safety focus as individuals.
1. Keeping your family safe is a person's prime focus. This is an instinctive trait, and our desire to protect our children is one reason why we've survived as a species.
2. Keeping yourself safe is a person's next important focus. This is also an instinctive trait. Its primary purpose is to keep us around until child-bearing age.
3. Keeping others safe is another human focus. Society expects us to help others when they are in distress whenever possible. This natural tendency has been protected in our litigious society by Good Samaritan laws that protect helpful individuals from legal problems if they render assistance and things go awry. In some cases, the Good Samaritan laws stipulate further that it's a requirement to give aid, although this may be as simple as dialing 9-1-1, or another emergency number. Altruism likely has its roots in human cooperation in our hunter-gatherer activities, and this too helped us survive as a species.
In a more abstract expression of keeping others safe, we keep our co-workers safe by anticipating things that could bring them into harm's way. We clean debris off the floor so our co-workers won't fall, and we train them about workplace hazards. We take care also to develop and manufacture safe products. In Honeywell's case, we even sell products, such as Traffic Collision Avoidance Systems and Ground Proximity Warning Systems, that assist in safety. Furthermore, we take necessary environmental precautions, such as safe disposal of hazardous materials, to keep the world safe for future generations.
References:
1. Robert Siciliano's Web Site.
2. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
3. Morristown Health, Safety and Environmental Web Site.