Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Jim Pozl has a great biography. You can link up
Speaker 1: to him at Coast to Coast AM dot com and
Speaker 1: he knows what he's talking about. Years in the business
Speaker 1: with OSHA compliance and both on industry side and trying
Speaker 1: to keep track of regulations on another side. And now
Speaker 1: he's the host of the Safety Wars podcast. So, Jim,
Speaker 1: when you say safety wars right away, I'm wondering, like, okay,
Speaker 1: well then who are the combatants in the safety war?
Speaker 1: Who are the biggest players that keep us unsafe that
Speaker 1: we have to have safety wars? Well, this is no
Speaker 1: I get this plush and asked all the time, what
Speaker 1: what are we doing here? Well, we on one side,
Speaker 1: you have us rightful, however you want to define that
Speaker 1: victims put right right? Yeah. On the other hand, and
Speaker 1: is everything else that we have to deal with. It
Speaker 1: could be a workplace situation where you have no employers
Speaker 1: not following OSHA regulations, environmental regulations, things of that nature.
Speaker 1: You can have government bureaucrats on the other hand. My opinion,
Speaker 1: my personal opinion is that this whole thing with sovereign
Speaker 1: immunity has to be revisited. Here, tell me what that means.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Well, that means that they're not
Speaker 1: responsible for any of the decisions that they make on
Speaker 1: that after government, which allows a lot of people to
Speaker 1: make decisions that in private industry. If I made the
Speaker 1: same decision, I'd probably be in a federal prison somewhere. Okay,
Speaker 1: But who's making who gets sovereign immunity? Basically emergency managers?
Speaker 1: Police officers are another one that we've heard a lot
Speaker 1: about that lately. Politicians, hands of agencies, government appointees, things
Speaker 1: of that nature. Unless it's specifically a loss, one says
Speaker 1: that there's they could be convicted of something. There is
Speaker 1: really nothing that that could happen, and when they do,
Speaker 1: guess one as slap on the wrist. For example, in Michigan, Flint,
Speaker 1: Michigan with a lead in the water situation, there were
Speaker 1: criminal convictions there with that and a couple of them
Speaker 1: and they were just slaps on the wrists and they're
Speaker 1: being appealed on everything else. Another one, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a serious one with environmental but we just had one
Speaker 1: here in the last couple of years in our neighborhood
Speaker 1: I live right now in southern New York, in the
Speaker 1: southern up state New York, but I grew up in
Speaker 1: central New Jersey where we had allegedly members of the
Speaker 1: Chris Christy administration a couple of years back, caused a
Speaker 1: huge traffic jam. Right, They eventually got convicted of stuff,
Speaker 1: and then they got overturned. That was a whole community.
Speaker 1: It could be anything. The bridge kate think, all right,
Speaker 1: so right, okay, well this is super cool, So let
Speaker 1: me ask you then. The implication is, then, is somebody
Speaker 1: who's in charge of our safety could flagrantly make a
Speaker 1: bad call, right and and and know that they would
Speaker 1: never be held accountable for it, except maybe they might
Speaker 1: lose their gig. Other people could lose much more than that, Right, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's essentially correct. And it's not only that when we're
Speaker 1: talking about the safety war, it's no. One of the
Speaker 1: things that I do with my program, and I get
Speaker 1: hire to do this my clients, is to coach their
Speaker 1: employees on how to be safe and to train them
Speaker 1: and also how to address a lot of the safety
Speaker 1: issues in their own workplace, their own environment, and everything else.
Speaker 1: Because a lot of times worthy barrier that to our
Speaker 1: own safety. A lot of times there's incentence in the
Speaker 1: workplace and things of that nature. So and sometowed us
Speaker 1: being advocates for ourselves. OSHA has a huge program called
Speaker 1: the Outreach Training Program where there's four different areas that
Speaker 1: you could go into. I have credentials in all four areas,
Speaker 1: one of them being disaster to response and when they've
Speaker 1: tried to educate the public, and it's been a very
Speaker 1: successful program over the years, but still needs some improvement
Speaker 1: and things of that nature. So it's us sometimes too.
Speaker 1: On the other side, our attitudes are lack of awareness.
Speaker 1: Sometimes again, like my wife points out to me, not
Speaker 1: everybody is into this, Jimmy. You know, yeah, now I'm
Speaker 1: into it, And I think this is what's really interesting
Speaker 1: is so when you brought up Flint, Michigan, that's what
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about these power Palestine. I don't care. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna tell you what I mean. I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not even in the bleachers, right, I'm not in the stadium.
Speaker 1: I'm a million miles away. But I don't. Part of
Speaker 1: me just says I don't care that they're testing five
Speaker 1: hundred houses clean right now. That wasn't the story in Flint.
Speaker 1: It was an accumulative problem, and then when it got
Speaker 1: worse and worse and worse, then it's like then the
Speaker 1: iceberg flips, right. And so that's what I'm a little
Speaker 1: bit worried about with the people, the good people of
Speaker 1: East Palestine, is they're gonna get written off as well.
Speaker 1: We did the testing, All is good. Now. I heard
Speaker 1: somebody just told me on Twitter, thank you Jeff, that
Speaker 1: FEMA has finally agreed to come down and take a
Speaker 1: look at it. Okay, great, But even they can just go, well,
Speaker 1: that's enough, we've done. We've done the testing, We've satisfied
Speaker 1: even Jim posles four questions, and now we're done. But
Speaker 1: five years from now is when the problem starts. I
Speaker 1: see a situation here, and by the way, everything is
Speaker 1: said is one hundred percent relevant here, all right, I
Speaker 1: see what's going What if this is handled, No, especially
Speaker 1: with some of the statements from the EPA administrator, this
Speaker 1: is going to be alike similar to another Love canal
Speaker 1: situation right into that. There's going to be ongoing monitoring here.
Speaker 1: I think the only the final resolution here, and it
Speaker 1: maybe ten twenty years down the line, is that this
Speaker 1: whole town gets condemned up to a certain point, and
Speaker 1: from there are going to be property buyouts because I
Speaker 1: tell you what, even with the testing in the homes,
Speaker 1: all right, No, I'll give at a little bit technical here.
Speaker 1: So you have this snake controlled demolition here, this controlled
Speaker 1: explosion here and fire what probably was the right thing
Speaker 1: to do with when you look at the nature of
Speaker 1: the chemicals here? Well, now what do you do in
Speaker 1: the houses? There's residues left behind possibly, right, and now
Speaker 1: you're going to be sampling for those, whatever those are.
Speaker 1: The question is now comes out what's safe? Like I
Speaker 1: said previously, that's a legal definition. So for example, in air,
Speaker 1: for example, I'll give you a couple of statistics here.
Speaker 1: Can't do too many because I got too many questions,
Speaker 1: were good? Give me one, good one? Okay? So right now,
Speaker 1: for air contamination in the workplace, there are five hundred
Speaker 1: official exposure limits from the government, right, i'll call permissible
Speaker 1: exposure limits. All right, how many chemicals do you think
Speaker 1: are in the workplace? Possibly? Yeah, eighty thousand I've heard,
Speaker 1: and there's not an exact number. So now we have
Speaker 1: not a lot of exposure limits versus all of these contaminants,
Speaker 1: and who's going to determine what's safe and what's not
Speaker 1: all quick example for uh no, uh for lead for example,
Speaker 1: for lead based paint issues and things in that nature.
Speaker 1: They have standards for that for what's allowable in the house. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good example. But that's good for But that's
Speaker 1: a good example because at one point, lead paint, asbestos,
Speaker 1: you know, asbis tile, all these things, at one point
Speaker 1: had been deemed safe and it really takes decades to
Speaker 1: prove that they aren't. So let me just back back
Speaker 1: to the explosion thing. So here it was East Palestine.
Speaker 1: By the way, do we know the cause of the
Speaker 1: crash yet? Do I? Did I miss? There are a
Speaker 1: couple of us theories here on this where apparently twenty
Speaker 1: miles prior to this happening, Uh, there were there was
Speaker 1: a probably a security camera or some type of closed
Speaker 1: circuit camera system picked up the train and apparently one
Speaker 1: of allegedly right, I haven't seen the footage. Allegedly one
Speaker 1: of the wheels was starting to fail. Um one of
Speaker 1: these cars, all right, And what happens is the way
Speaker 1: things are set up when they hit the brakes, not
Speaker 1: all the brakes go off at one time, and this
Speaker 1: often causes a derailment. This is one of the leading
Speaker 1: causes from what I've read and from what I've heard
Speaker 1: inside the industry, of a derailment. So one of the
Speaker 1: solutions that they're going to be looking at is electronically
Speaker 1: controlled pneumatic breaks where everything's able to break at relatively
Speaker 1: the same time a minimum lag. Right, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: And also an acoustic detector is uh no, because these
Speaker 1: things make noises. If you're at go on it, it
Speaker 1: makes a noise. But the thing is this train was
Speaker 1: like two miles long, right, one hundred and forty some cars,
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty cars and uh no. And there's
Speaker 1: been other arguments that things are undermanned, which is part
Speaker 1: of what the almost was last year. That was one
Speaker 1: of the issues right as a results, So the big
Speaker 1: thing is this therek going the NTSP is going to
Speaker 1: be doing an investigation here and hopefully they're going to
Speaker 1: get to the bottom of this, and hopefully we're going
Speaker 1: to have good policy recommendations and changes. The worst thing
Speaker 1: that we could that could happen is a knee jerk
Speaker 1: reaction or a political a Look, I didn't writing about
Speaker 1: this and guess no, the twenty twenty four elections are
Speaker 1: coming up. Yeah, we call it like a like a
Speaker 1: hasty piece or you know, a hasty resolution. All right,
Speaker 1: So so here here's what. First of all, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think the average car has more idiot lights that
Speaker 1: are going off on sensors, on wheels. Right. I got
Speaker 1: one going off on my tire right now because in
Speaker 1: the change of weather, I had a slight change in
Speaker 1: my PSI and one of my tires, right, So it's
Speaker 1: showing up like if they if they can do that
Speaker 1: for a Volkswagon, for God's sake, for a trade. There
Speaker 1: are something like three to four thousand different safety features
Speaker 1: in a car thanks to Ralph Nader who was a
Speaker 1: right an advocate, sure advocate and Coast to Coast guests, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: uh what so Yeah, I think adding more things getting
Speaker 1: the human element out of this and adding more and
Speaker 1: more automated things to eliminate out to eliminate human error,
Speaker 1: and the human factor is probably where this is going well,
Speaker 1: where it needs especially we're talking about a wobbly wheel
Speaker 1: for God's sakes, all right. So anyway to hang on
Speaker 1: to that thought, if we are at a point we're
Speaker 1: blowing something up is the safest response, but something is
Speaker 1: primal is exploding, it is what we think will be
Speaker 1: the safest response moving forward. I think that represents you
Speaker 1: may be right, maybe the best solution, But it seems
Speaker 1: really silly that they're like, yep, better dynamiter, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, like that's if that's really what it comes
Speaker 1: down to, then we haven't progressed much. But even the
Speaker 1: even on the air and the chemical part, it's not
Speaker 1: just the town that might be affected. But again, if
Speaker 1: it gets into the water supply, or it gets down river,
Speaker 1: how many other towns are we talking about that are
Speaker 1: going to be affected by that? You know, that that
Speaker 1: slick that came down the river that was killing all
Speaker 1: the fish. I mean this, how many parts per billion
Speaker 1: does it take to make people ill and to start
Speaker 1: affecting you know, say reproduction or women who are pregnant
Speaker 1: or whatever. That's that that varies. And then they have
Speaker 1: what are called LV fifties and LC fifties that stands
Speaker 1: or legal does fifty percent or lethal concentration and uh
Speaker 1: those are done on animals and how they equate to humans. Again,
Speaker 1: that's not really ethical to try to figure out what
Speaker 1: sure to kill someone, So they try to do different
Speaker 1: calculations and strapolated. Yeah, right with that, So that's another question.
Speaker 1: The other thing is this, like we found that with
Speaker 1: COVID and other things, we could kill me, may not
Speaker 1: kill you. Right. So it's very difficult for them to
Speaker 1: come up with these numbers, is can they Yeah, they
Speaker 1: can come up with I can come up with the numbers.
Speaker 1: But no, what No, I don't think that's going to
Speaker 1: sell good right the public? And I think what I think,
Speaker 1: that's what we're looking at when we're looking at it
Speaker 1: East Palestine. And then when they say there's a thousand
Speaker 1: a year of these is people will start thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: wait what and if it's a thousand, even if you
Speaker 1: divided it by you know, as you said, it's like
Speaker 1: let's go three a day, you know, I mean there's
Speaker 1: a lot of direct I was in a train derail
Speaker 1: New Ones. I was in a passenger train derailment that
Speaker 1: a train got derailed because it was so cold it
Speaker 1: was it was well below zero about three days in
Speaker 1: a row. It was like fifteen twenty below zero. And
Speaker 1: I'm taking a commuter train back from college and one
Speaker 1: of the either the ties I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: it was actually the rail itself cracked and it meant
Speaker 1: that the train just kind of tipped over gently, fortunately
Speaker 1: because we were going so slowly through South Chicago. We
Speaker 1: were coming up from the Southern and Chicago, and it
Speaker 1: just it just like the train was moving five to
Speaker 1: ten miles an hour whatever it was, it cracked and
Speaker 1: then it just fell over. And everybody was fine, which
Speaker 1: was good, and not every train car fell over, but
Speaker 1: most of them did as a result of that derailment.
Speaker 1: And you think, well, okay, that's a weather element. You
Speaker 1: can't couldn't really predict that, and I don't think that
Speaker 1: that was necessarily human error. But I'm really worried about
Speaker 1: some of the train crashes that we've talked about where
Speaker 1: there was drugs involved, cell phone involved, people who are
Speaker 1: calling you, like the famous commuter the you know, the
Speaker 1: Amtrak train crash that happened because somebody who's on a
Speaker 1: cell phone. Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every
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