The Worst Kind of Hazard is a "No Awareness" Hazard

DMS is in the safety business. We work in industries that are known to be dangerous, and without attention to safety precautions, lives are at stake.

The worst kind of hazard is one where there's no awareness of the potential hazard. This Tip from the Field is that story. Fortunately, it had a good outcome.

Co-owner and Vice President of DMS, Ray Peacoe, was asked to come onsite to help troubleshoot a problem calibrating a gas detector. Here's Ray's story of what happened next...

Based on the knowledge and expertise that I had, I quickly determined that their detector was configured to detect a very different gas than than what they were trying to calibrate with.

The fact that they were having trouble probably was a good thing. Had they calibrated it successfully--or had I been able to successfully calibrate it--it would have left them in a very dangerous position. The detector would not have responded properly to the hazard gas.

So we we did a little bit of investigation with the customer to determine what the actual gas hazard was. Then we configured the detector properly; calibrated it properly; and, in the end, left there with the great satisfaction that that we had made an impact by making that workplace much, much safer than it would have been.

Because had they calibrated their detector with the easier-to-detect gas, it would have left them with a detector that would never have detected the harder-to-detect combustible gas, creating a very dangerous situation for the customer.

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