Lisa Ryan: Hey, it's Lisa Ryan. Welcome to the Manufacturer's Network podcast. I'm excited to introduce you to our guest today, Jonathan Klane.
Jonathan is senior safety Editor for Lab Manager Magazine and has been in the field of environmental health, safety, and risk for 35 years in many roles. He's also a Ph.D. candidate in human and social dimensions of science and technology, where he studies in two large areas risk perceptions, cognitive biases, decision making, and storytelling, how it affects how we see risks, and its many other valuable benefits. Jonathan, welcome to the show.
Jonathan Klane: Thanks, Lisa. It's an absolute pleasure to be here.
Lisa Ryan: Please share a little about your background and what led you to do what you're doing.
Jonathan Klane: I started in Maine as an environmental geologist and an industrial hygienist. My undergrad is in geology. I got hired to do industrial hygiene, which is just exposure science. Your listeners in manufacturing would know processes generate vapors, fumes, et cetera, and someone has to know how to measure that and figure it all out. So I did that and gradually ended up doing training. Then taught college for several years and enjoyed that, exposing me to different clients.
And from there, I got back into consulting on my own. I did that for a few years before finally migrating to Arizona, where I worked for Arizona State University as a safety director. On my card, it said bald-headed Safety guy. That was my title. People would say, How did you get that on the cards? And I would always say, Oh, I figured out how to hack the system. But it was that no one cared. So it was a nice joke. I did that for ten years and a couple of different colleges of engineering.
And then that eventually took me to this wonderful role I'm in, where I finally write for a living, which I enjoy doing for a lab manager magazine. It's a great place, Wonderful people. And we write about all sorts of stuff dealing with labs, Senior safety editor. So I write primarily about lab safety, about risk. And, of course, as part of the Ph.D. program, I write a little bit about storytelling, or I engage in storytelling as part of it.
Lisa Ryan: Both are important to the manufacturing office audience because the risk is inherent in working in a plant environment. And what you said earlier with the fumes, you want to ensure that you're keeping your workers as safe as possible. But that also brings us to storytelling, where you can convey to your employees the importance of what they do and how you care for them. What is the reasoning behind why what they do is so important?
So let's start with risk. That's what you want to avoid the most in manufacturing. How would you describe risk and some? What are some of our perceptions as far as risk goes?
Jonathan Klane: Risk is a much better concept than just safety. In safety. We always say you're safe or not safe, and it's such a binary concept that it's not usually helpful. There are so many nuances to it, but risks. I'm sure a lot of your audience is familiar with this. You can look at it as two factors or three factors. So, the two in particular to start. What is the probability of something happening? Basically, what are the odds, right? And then, of course, how bad will it be?
What's the severity of the consequence, right? And so, besides processes that generate vapors and fumes and dust and all of that stuff, or maybe it creates dust that collects. And then the worst thing that could happen is they could have a combustible dust explosion. That has occurred across many industries.
It could be guarding issues, so the worst is someone can get devastatingly injured or even killed if they bypass the guards, if the machinery doesn't have the proper guards, or if...
