The Flame Bucket

The Boeing Company was once synonymous with safe, reliable commercial aviation. Then that reputation was devastated by two fatal airplane crashes, and $20 billion in costs and fines. Marc Axelrod, an award winning front line industrial hygienist and workplace safety professional, witnessed the erosion of Boeing's safety culture many years before these tragic occurrences. He sought to change that culture by improving Boeing's programs, metrics and communications. Sometimes his innovations met with resistance and rejection. But other times he found reward and recognition. The Flame Bucket is a narrative driven, non-fiction work memoir describing Marc's career as an industrial hygienist and workplace safety professional. He has managed safety programs at Rockwell International/Boeing, served as Safety Director for two large Kaiser Permanente Orange County hospitals and associated medical office buildings, lectured at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and served as Safety Officer for the City of Beverly Hills. The beryllium machine shop at Rockwell Anaheim was one of the largest of its kind. Safe beryllium operations were essential for several Air Force ICBM systems and the manufacture of the world's most accurate navigation systems, as well as large structural Space Shuttle components. Marc was Subject Matter Expert on beryllium, which if not used with the proper safe guards can cause life limiting exposures. Shortly after assuming these responsibilities, two employees were diagnosed with chronic beryllium disease, resulting in headlines, regulatory scrutiny and employee anxiety. Marc's first great challenge was one of the most consequential of his career. Marc was his site's expert on the hazards of radiation, lasers, radiofrequency, and a variety of toxic chemicals. He also developed an expertise on organizational safety including metrics, communication and decision making. His paper, "The Safety Program That Allows Accidents - Intermediate Goal Setting, Risk Homeostasis and Normal Accident Theory at Boeing," was accepted for presentation at the 2006 American Industrial Hygiene Association Conference. At the last moment Boeing executive leadership refused to permit his lecture. What was so threatening about this safety presentation? Despite a growing reputation as a maverick safety professional, Marc was nominated by his immediate management for Boeing Technical Fellow. His candidate application package detailed accomplishments worth over $250 million, showing value besides mere loss control. He was a single vote away from achieving the career recognition that only a handful of Boeing engineers ever receive. The alcohol spray cleaning operation that Marc went to evaluate at Boeing's Huntington Beach facility in 2007, did not have an exhaust hood. Cal/OSHA, California's Occupational and Health Administration, forbids spray cleaning with flammable solvents without this safety control. Boeing management continued to operate despite written requests from employees for correction, and Marc's regulatory analysis. Marc had career sacrificing choices to make to bring this job into compliance, but never compromised his integrity or his commitment to the employees he had pledged to protect. Every healthcare employee who depends on respirators for protection must under go a process that makes sure they fit and protect. N-95 respirators are a just a dollar's worth of paper without fit testing. This usually involves exposure to a challenge atmosphere , such as a water based saccharine spray aerosol. At Kaiser Permanente, Marc performed "Fit Test Karaoke" to motivate and inspire his co-workers. (Rumor has it that this performance is still located somewhere in the far reaches of the internet.) The Flame Bucket includes these and other stories and expands on Marc's main premise - that it is more valuable to understand what causes safety that it is to know what causes accidents.