By Richard T. Cartwright, PE, CHMM, (IHMM, AHMP and APICS) Fellow
The saying, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is more than a cliché. It is a reminder that we must constantly be learning from the past. Here’s a look back at major historical events that happened today in the world of hazardous materials.
September 27, 1962
Rachel Carson, the American author and biologist, published her best-selling book, Silent Spring, which was initially viewed as an attack on American agriculture. It took decades for people to really understand Carson’s perspective on the overuse of pesticides. Some credit Carson with starting the environmental movement. Regardless, she added a huge amount of momentum for an audience that was ready for her message. Carson never advocated a total ban on DDT. Instead, she believed in saving it (when effective) for human health use and the fight against malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Drenching fields with pesticides, when other approaches are more effective, is what Carson rigorously and eloquently attacked.
September 27, 1915
A railroad tank car filled with casing-head gasoline exploded in the railway depot in Ardmore, Okla., destroying most of the downtown. Casing-head gasoline comes from the natural gas wells integral to Oklahoma’s early petroleum development. The tragic accident resulted in new gasoline transportation regulations.
September 27, 1910
Fritz Haber, the German-born chemist and Nobel Prize Laureate, and Robert Le Rossignol, a British chemist, received a U.S. patent for a large-scale ammonia manufacturing process. They were able to produce ammonia directly from hydrogen and nitrogen gasses via passing them over a heated, finely divided, osmium metal catalyst. Although nitrogen makes up 80% of the air, as a gas it is quite unreactive. Despite being readily available, elemental nitrogen gas had previously been very difficult to convert into a more reactive chemical compound. When nitrogen is chemically combined in the form of ammonia, many other nitrogen compounds can then be made.
September 27, 1903
The mail train, nicknamed “Old 97”, crashed in Virginia. The derailment occurred while the train, traveling at a high speed to stay on schedule, approached a curve too quickly. It fell from a trestle to the ravine below, killing several people. The accident inspired the famous ballad recorded by Johnny Cash and Woody Guthrie.
September 27, 1854
Heavy fog caused two ships to collide near Newfoundland, where
322 people died. The luxury cruise ship’s captain did not follow the usual safety measures when dealing with fog. He did not slow his ship’s speed, he did not sound the ship’s horn and he did not add extra watchmen.
September 27, 1849
Ivan Pavlov, the Russian physiologist and Nobel Prize Laureate, was born. In the experiment which made him famous, he trained a hungry dog to associate the sound of a bell with receiving food. Thereafter, the dog would salivate on hearing the bell alone. This work began as merely a study in digestion, with a series of experiments on dogs to investigate how digestive secretions are regulated. He identified three stimuli that caused dogs to begin to salivate: seeing, smelling or tasting food. He realized that digestion is partly controlled by sensory stimuli. He named this stimulus-effect relationship the “conditioned reflex.”
September 27, 1825
The railroad transportation industry was born when the first railroad tracks were completed in England. The passenger train was pulled along the tracks by a locomotive engine, not by a horse.
September 27, 1818 Adolphe Kolbe, a German chemist, was born. He was the first chemist to synthesize an organic compound (acetic acid) from inorganic materials. This was previously thought to be impossible according to prevailing Doctrines of Vitalism (the theory that organic compounds could only be synthesized by a living organism). He later used phenol and carbon dioxide to produce salicylic acid, which led to cheaper production of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin).
Historical hazardous materials management events are posted 365 days a year at this LinkedIn discussion group.
