We are free to call and we will help anyone who calls in one way
or another. A lot of fire departments think
that they have to be subscribers and we are completely free for
all. First responders will help
anyone who calls, even if it's not a company that is registered
with us. Don't do everything we can to
support them. Welcome to the Environmental
Transformation Podcast, where we bring you interviews with
industry leaders, climate champions, sustainability
practitioners, EHS and hazmat professionals making an impact
in their businesses today. Each leader solving complex
challenges and delivering solutions within their areas of
expertise. I'm your host, Sean Grady, and
thanks for joining us today. Before we jump in, make sure to
follow us on your devices and visit my website at
www.seankgrady.com and sign up for our newsletter and e-mail
announcements. Now let's get started.
Welcome to the Environmental Transformation Podcast.
I'm your host, Sean Grady, and today's guest is Kevin Lobezzo.
Kevin is with Chemtrak. And today, we are going to dive
into the part of the chemical world that's most people never
see, but every responder depends on.
Chemtrack has been the backbone of global chemical emergency
communication for more than 50 years, connecting firefighters,
law enforcement, medical teams, and industry experts in the
moments when accurate information matters most.
In this episode, we're going to go beyond the basics.
We're going to explore how Chemtrack Emergency Operation
Center processes complex incidents and how they integrate
with regulatory frameworks like 49 CFR and international
transport codes. We're really excited to bring
Kevin on the show and dive into Chemtrak and all the services
they offer. So welcome to the show, Kevin.
Thanks. Very much, Sean.
And before we get started, just have to do a quick disclaimer
that The opinions expressed in today's podcast are my own and
not the opinions of Chemtrak or the American Chemistry Council.
All right. Well, Kevin, there you go.
What do you think is the most misunderstood part of Chemtraq's
role in global chemistry safety? And why do you think that
misconception persists? That's a great question.
Chemtraq has changed a lot over the years and I think a lot of
folks used to the Chemtraq of 20-30 years ago where we were
very US focused with a little bit on Canada and Mexico.
And you know, we were a source that you would call for expert
information for a lot of safety data sheets.
And you know, we're, we're no longer just the US, you know,
Canada, Mexico, North America, we operate worldwide.
We have emergency contacts for chemical companies all over the
world. And you know we are we are free
to call and we will help anyone who calls in one way or another.
A lot of fire departments think that they have to be subscribers
or that there's a fee associated and they're unsure of what they
will get. And we are completely free for
all. First responders will help
anyone who calls, even if it's not a company that is registered
with us. Don't do everything we can to
support them. Well, that's great to know.
I mean, that that's an interesting piece of information
that I didn't, I wasn't aware of.
It's it's good to know that, you know, mercy responders can rely
on, you know, somebody, you know, somebody in the cloud,
right? That's going to help them
understand maybe what's really going on, right?
Yeah. And you know, we're, we're in a
nice comfortable office. You know, we're not out there in
the field where there is noise and weather and radios to pay
attention to calling us and helping, you know, letting us
help with some of that research and reaching out to experts in
a, a lower stress environment where we're not paying attention
to 100 things at once. You know, we can really be a a
tool in the toolbox of any incident commander that's on a
hazard materials incident, at least to paying ideas off of if
not to help with decision support.
So, so the misunderstood part is you guys offer a free service to
to 1st responders who need help. Now if we could though, you
know, let's segue a little bit into the fee structure or the
fee aspect of your service because there are people who pay
you for the use of your service. Maybe you can talk a little bit
about what that looks like and how that how that works, you
know for you guys and your customers.
Yeah. I mean, it's pretty, pretty
simple. You know, companies use our
phone number for, you know, the emergency contact and safety
data sheets to satisfy the requirement for an ERI provider
on shipping papers. And, you know, somebody wants to
use our phone number and once you use our service for that
purpose, you know, there there is a fee associated with that to
cover, you know, maintenance of accounts and things like that.
If someone is using our phone number on shipping papers, the
understanding is that, you know, we know they're doing it and
they communicate that to us. And, you know, we have the
information we need to assess if there is an emergency involving
their shipment or their product. So say you've got a client who
maybe they are a customer, but they forgot to tell you that
they're shipping some hazardous materials and then they're, you
know, an accident happens. What what's the process?
How does that work? Then at that point you just go
kind of go into fact finding mode, you know what are the
maybe the chemicals of concern that are are known and then how
to handle it. You don't, even though you don't
know that it actual the shipment took place.
Yeah. And, you know, it's not usually
somebody that's that's, you know, using our phone number.
He's forgotten to tell us. You know, our phone number has
been around for so long that companies have come and gone.
There have been mergers, acquisitions, sales,
bankruptcies, reorganizations, and, you know, maybe they
decided to take that in house and have their own phone number
on there or go to somebody else. And we're still going to try and
assist the best we can. You know, during the day it's a
lot easier, you know, during the work week because we can try and
find that company's phone number.
If we can't solve the problem, reach out to them and say, hey,
you've got a truck flipped over on the highway.
I've got a Fire Chief on the line that needs help and
assistance and we don't have your company information
anymore. Or it could be, you know, I
think 11 good example. And one aspect I like of doing
this job, what really kept me here is doing some detective
work right where, you know, we had an incident at a an old
oilfield site and the only thing that was there was a rusty sign
that said the company name and Chemtraq and our phone number on
it. And this place had been
abandoned for abandoned but not active for some time.
And the company name on there was no longer a registrant.
They weren't registered with us. They weren't recognized being a
registrant. And we were able to use publicly
available information to trace where that company went, that
they were bought by one company. Then that company was bought and
that company was bought down to where we were able to find a
company that was registered with us.
And we called them and the first emergency contacts said, oh,
yeah, I know exactly where that is.
What can I do for you? So we're, we're still going to
try and help, you know, we're going to do whatever we can.
It it's a little more difficult if it's after hours on a
holiday, on a weekend that because we might not be able to
find emergency contact information for that company.
You know, they may have stopped shipping hazardous materials or,
you know, their safety data sheets may not be publicly
available in a way that we can get to and see who their contact
is. So, you know, at that point we
will we'll engage whatever resources we have available to
try and solve that problem to the best of our ability.
And then during normal business hours follow up again to say,
hey, you know, we help these guys out.
This is what it is. And if it is a situation where
someone's using our phone number and maybe they shouldn't be
using it, we'll again, we'll do what we can and then our sales
team will reach out to that company during the week and say,
hey, FYI, we got this call, let's talk about it.
I think we need to get you under contract because you're using
our number, right? Yeah, right, right.
Well, okay, so Chemtrax been around since 1971.
How is the nature of chemical emergencies, you know, changed
over the decades, you know, and how's Chemtrac adapted to the
changes over the time? Yeah, it's changed a lot.
Even even in my, you know, 18 odd years here, there's been a
noticeable change in the types of phone calls we get, the
problems that responders are facing.
When we first started, we were 4 responders.
That was who we served. There weren't nearly as many
people on duty, and the incidents you got tended to be
more complicated because there were not the available resources
back in the 1970s, Nineteen 80s and 90s.
So you had to do a lot more legwork.
You know, they had binders of safety data sheets they had to
go through. You're flipping through the IO
SH book and the erg and then yeah, you know.
It was the paper world. And now those resources are
available to everybody. And after 911, a lot of money
got poured into fire departments and police departments and
Emergency Management. You know, those folks became
much more experienced in the basics of hazardous materials
response. You know, I'll, I'll never
forget within the first year or two I was here, I had an
incident where there was a drum behind a bank and it had a label
on it with a chemical name and it was a jar.
And I was talking to a guy that was riding the back step,
probably a newer guy. And I said, well, I can't tell
you what's in there. The drum is open the labels,
probably it could match what's in there.
It might not match what's in there.
And I said, use guide 111 from the erg.
And he said guide 111. What's that?
And you know, we, we don't get that anymore.
Most fire departments, they have at least awareness of OP, not
OPS and technician. So when they're calling us,
they're not calling with what I would I would consider a simple
problem. They're calling with a plan and
they want a second or third source or they want to talk to
an expert to say your plan is good or to confirm what they
learned. Or they have something that's
just complicated that they can't deal without the field.
And we're kind of missing that middle now.
You know, we still get the occasional call from someone who
just doesn't have a whole lot of knowledge and response, but
that's more rare. It's usually these more
complicated ones where it's a reaction between multiple
chemicals or it's a large spill, or it's environmental
contamination. It's in a sore and they want to
know what to do about it. It's not as simple as OK well
get to a safe distance, dam and dyke with dirt or absorbent,
whatever you have around and then wait for the hazmat team to
get there. I think of the maturity of the
industry and you know, all the training requirements and
expectations of fire departments and, and all the, like I said
like either through FEMZA, through, you know, all the other
dot training requirements, I mean, they've had to actually
spend a significant amount of time and effort preparing their
staff to, to be in compliance with these requirements.
So I think, you know, maturity over the past 20 years with the
regulation has kind of helped. I think you and this whole, I
think seeing the, the industry respond, which is good, right?
I mean, that's what it's supposed to do, right?
And you know, even with Hascom, you know, when the safety data
sheet standards got raised, a lot of safety data sheets when I
started that were still real basic.
It was 2 pages. Yeah, the GHS was like it was
seemed like a very slow roll out for a bit too and you know,
right. Yeah.
And you know, the safety data sheets that came out of that,
that were in compliance with GHS are way better than they used to
be, way more useful. There's a lot of a great
information on there that's that's helped us be more
effective. And you know, it's, it's helped
fire parts be more effective as well.
They can pull a safety data sheet up on their, their laptop
in the field now or on a cell phone and you know, they're,
they have that access now. If they if they know what
they're looking at, it can be a very useful talk tool.
Well, yeah, I mean, you know, most data safety SDSS weren't
really available online for many, many years.
I mean, and it's just as this kind of a new thing.
I mean, within the past say, what, 10 years we've had online
SDS. So yeah, it's a big deal, right?
Yeah, and a lot of companies have seen the value in putting
their safety data sheets out there, you know, that are
publicly available. They're not all behind a
password now, right? So that's you know that they're,
they're, they're positives and negatives to that.
It's, you know, more information is always a good thing, but you
have to know how to understand and and interpret the
information that you're reading or you know you might not have
as effective of a response. Well, walk us through if you
could a little bit like you know what actually happens inside,
you know the emergency operations center when you guys
get a call and it comes in, you know what, what, what, what does
the first min or two look like for you guys?
Yeah. So, so we want to ensure the
safety of the caller and those around them, right.
Our first priority is, is life safety.
So we're going to ask questions to determine what's going on,
who is the caller, what is their level of experience and
capability, where is the incident and what is involved
and what quantity, what's the circumstance of the release.
You know, the information and decision support that we give
for a one gallon pail of paint is going to be a lot different
from a tank car of chlorine. So we want to very quickly
triage that call and get the basic information we need to be
successful. So we can decide, OK, well this
is not a time critical incident. We can spend more time gathering
information, you know, the nitty gritty of it.
You know, if we need to figure out a shipping location or if we
need shipping paper information or if it's a very clear, OK,
let's look at the isolation distances.
Let's get you a safe place first, and then we can talk
about what to do next. That's especially important with
untrained folks. You know, we're not just for
fire departments. We get calls from truck drivers
and train masters, conductors, you know, folks on ships at sea
and intercoastal waterways and private citizens that say, hey,
there's this truck parked outside of my hotel and there's
a gas coming out of it. Or this tank car has been behind
my house for a couple of days and now there's something coming
out of it. You know, we need to take that
level of experience and capability into account and get
that person away. We still use the ERG for that.
You know, the ERG is a great tool for the 1st 10 or 15
minutes of a response for getting away and getting safe.
And you know, we, we really lean on that heavy.
So, so for the listeners who may not be familiar with ERG, it's
your emergency response guide. So it's a standard guy that has
a lot of different response scenarios for different
chemicals and it goes by number and it's a great resource for
how to handle chemicals when they're spilled.
So anyways, like what PPE to use, you know, what this issue
should be and stuff like that. So just wanted to kind of
interject there for some people because we, we can be very
technical and there's a lot of layman folks that might listen
that aren't into this aspect of the environmental field.
They'll be like ERG, what are they talking about, right.
So anyway, just thought I would interject there.
And and that's a free tool as well.
There's an app in the Apple App Store, I think Google Play as
well. It can be downloaded from the
fibs website as APDF. And it's always fun to, you
know, when you're, when you're traveling around to look for
placards. Yeah, hey, that's a 1268.
What is that? You know, or Yeah.
Yeah, I love that. I I like doing the same thing.
It's good. Yeah.
OK. So so you, you basically triage
the situation by making sure that the people are safe before
you really get into it. And then, you know, once you've
identified what the chemical concern is that's being spilled,
I mean, like, all right. Are you calling emergency
response coordinators to get out to the site?
Are you leveraging a network that you own or manage yourself
that you know you're coordinating with partners?
I mean, how does that part work? Or are you calling the the
person's responder who has the contract with you, who they've
already told you we want you to call these people if someone
calls her, I mean, I don't know. How does this work for you on
that side? Yeah, I mean it, it kind of runs
cabin, you know, it depends on what that customer wants.
You know, if it's a registered customer and they have that,
then we'll work with that customer to facilitate
communication. You know, we don't, we don't
send anybody the incident scenes to do, you know, mitigation.
You know, we do have an offering where, you know, we, we do
assist in the lower 48 with a chemical response.
Typically that's going to be, you know, an outside party that
handles that. You know, we started doing our
client remediation offering because we wanted to help with
the start to finish of the incident instead of us getting
the information and doing isolation and then getting
details and then calling the registrant, telling the
registrant, OK, well, this is what's going on.
And they have to in turn call their contractor.
And it's a lot of extra steps where you know, if someone is
one of our, you know, companies that subscribes to our client
remediation service, it really streamlines that, you know,
we've already got the information on the incident,
we've got the location, the material quantity, all that
stuff. And we can engage with our
partner and then. Move them out quickly.
Yeah. So, you know, it's all about
making sure the response is faster.
You know, the the longer it takes to get somebody there to
do mitigation, you know it has the potential to be worse.
You're connecting with these responders with chemists,
toxicologists, you know, in the manufacturers.
How do you guys maintain this fast, always ready expert
network? Yeah, it's complicated.
We have a ton of contacts. You know, we have a ton of
registrants, we have a ton of resources.
So, you know, we do, we do have account management and we do
have customer service staff that interfaces with our customers
and, you know, make sure that contact information is up to
date, instructions that they may have is up to date.
And their safety data sheet database, whether or not we host
that or not is up to date. You know, we don't want to be in
a situation where we call someone who's retired or is no
longer with the company or we don't have safety data sheets
that are from the most recent year, something that's 10 years
old. And it's, it's a big task.
You know, it does take a lot of work with the level and the
number of conference customers that we have.
So, you know, we also, we also lean on them to give us updates
as they happen so their accounts are accurate.
But like, OK, so the type of staff that you maintain in your
business, I mean, you know, what type of experience do you have?
Like, you know, you say you've been there for 18 years, so
you're a seasoned vet that's been around the block a bit and
you've seen a lot of projects come through, you know, this
type of response, high pressure at times scenario to quick
think, think quick on your feet. Yeah, that takes a certain type
of individual. How are you like maintaining or
finding those to individuals or training the next generation up
to talk a little bit about that if you could?
Yeah, it's again, not easy. It's a unique job and it's
always been unique. Nobody really does what we do
the way that we do it. And, you know, we, we have a
wide variety of backgrounds. I mean, I, I recently got a
degree in environmental health and safety, but my first degree
was in photography and I joined the fire service in Prince
George's County because I wanted something to do that was a
little exciting. And I learned about Chemtrac
and, you know, was, was started working here while I was still a
volunteer. So I had a first responder
background. We have a few folks that are
first responders. We have folks that were, you
know, military CDRN guys. We have some folks that have
more of a customer service background because that's also
important. You know, the communication
aspect of this job is it can be hard to teach, you know, de
escalation and asking the same question 5 or 6 different ways.
So we want a diverse staff that has a diverse, diverse kind of
experience so we can all collaborate to figure out, you
know, how do we talk to this person?
How do we handle this incident the best?
And you know, for the folks that we don't have internally that
have that sort of experience, we always have outside parties we
can reach out to. OK.
So do you have like CI HS on staff?
Nope, although my, my, my last professor was trying to convince
me to go down that route. We'll see.
We are right next door to AIHA, which is always fun to ping
those folks and say, hey, how you doing today?
What's going on in the industrial hygiene world?
You know, I have my student CHMM and I'm working towards my full
CHMM. Well, good, you know you should
get it. I'll be a sponsor if you need
somebody because I'm a master level CHMM.
So it'd be great, you know, it's it's.
You know, we have another guy that's also a CHMM and eh, and S
plugs into what we do obviously with, you know, safety data
sheets and response. Like, you know, you have to know
that stuff if you're working in the EHS.
But you know, having more people in that field is something that
we're looking at as well because it's another type of experience
and I can't be the only guy that has background.
Yeah, you need more people. So yeah, I mean, absolutely.
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So you guys recently expanded into the incident documentation
and remediation coordination. You were just touching a little
bit about it, but what technical standards or report frameworks
guides that process, especially when multiple agencies or or
jurisdictions are involved, do you know?
Yeah. So, you know, we, we act as a
critical hub and facilitating response in that way, you know,
with one call customer can report an incident, triage the
situation and you know, dispatch remediation partner and you
know, all reporting invoices saying that the customer is
maintained through a single existing Chemtrak relationship.
So everything's done at once. As the technical handling of
remediation Chemtrak does rely on partners with expertise,
right. We we want to head.
So you've got a little bit of like you probably have a
Consulting Group that you work with that's supported along with
an emergency response group that does that.
I mean, we do have folks. Internally do like crisis
management, crisis solutions, you know, we, we work with those
folks to have disaster planning, business continuity, stuff like
that. So they're they're prepared
before an incident happens. Yeah.
And then they like the spill reporting, you know, that's a
lot of state agencies are really concerned about, you know, if
you spill more than 55 gallons of, you know, petroleum or other
types of chemicals like that, now you're automatically, you
don't have to call it into the state and then that creates an
incident number. Now there's an investigation.
Now you know you, so you're working with partners to help
out with that aspect of a cleanup as it relates to the
spill too. Is that kind of the extension of
this remediation coordination? So we in the operation center we
don't handle, we don't handle that there.
Chemtrak does have an offering for 1500 reporting for
transportation spills. But as far as the, you know,
after incident if we're talking more like you know, rec rest
stuff or state related programs, that's something the operation
center does. We we would lean on our our
industry partners for that. Gotcha.
Right. So you guys play a major role in
helping shippers comply with 49 CFR emergency response.
You know, the telephone number requirement, you know, that's
how I came across, you know, knowing what you guys do because
we were like, well, we need a, we need someone who can, we can,
you know, our somebody we could call because we don't want to be
on call 24/7. So we're going to have Chemtrak
do it or if our customer didn't want to do it, you know, so we,
we, it took us a while to figure out what's the best way to deal
with that requirement. But what are the most common
regulatory gaps that you see in the field, and how does Chemtrak
mitigate them? When it comes to this, so you
know, we we make sure that our customers are appraised right,
like they have access to a global regulatory tool for ease
of reference across international and national
regulations. We also send messages out to our
customers so they're aware of these changes and they're
informed. You know, 11 big challenge is
compliance following revisions to Hascom in CFR 1910 dot 1200
by OSHA aligning with GHS 7 and that's to improve hazard
classification labels, safety data sheets, things like that,
which requires updating all of that.
You know, all the safety data sheets, labels, Hascom programs
and training need to be in compliance with that.
So Chemtrack messages, you know, these changes kind of can assist
with, you know, authoring revisions to their programs,
making sure their training is up to date.
And we do offer professionally maintained and managed safety
data sheets as well to make sure that the data sheets are
accurate current maintain in accordance with the new
regulations. Would you guys?
Author SDSS for clients. We do, Yep, that's something
we're doing for a year or two now.
OK. Yeah.
We we we like to think that our safety data sheets are the gold
standard. Oh, all right.
Well, that's interesting. So how many, how many clients
are you know taking advantage of that service for you from you
guys? I'm not sure off the top of my
head unfortunately. But I mean, it's a pretty
significant amount of work for you guys or what?
I'm not sure, yeah, I don't do the authoring bit.
I use the safety data sheets. I don't know how their own.
So I'm not sure you know how many folks we have actually
doing that, but we've we've got a few that are offering
authoring data sheets. OK.
So then what other types of services besides the emergency
response number and say SDS you do you, do you offer, do you do
like record training or dot training and those types of
things? Do you offer that type of
service? We do, yeah.
We have a few training classes on our our learning hub that
are, you know, 49 CFR has com IRA stuff.
We do have a hazmat refresher course on there.
So, you know, we do have a wide range of trainings that are
available and we've also done some bespoke training for
different customers that have come to us with a need for, you
know, something specific to their business, typically a
specific commodity. And they'll tell us the
audience, you know, what they do with the material and you know,
what they're looking to train their folks on, be it just, you
know, general awareness, you know, the first few minutes of
response, more product knowledge stuff.
So we've also done that for a fair number of customers.
So for some of the basic like Recra 8 hour refresher or the
dot, you know, refresher that needs to be taken, you know,
every three years. Are those just like online
courses you offer? Yes, yeah.
And when they sign up, I believe they have access for a few
months to a year. That's all available on our
website as well, the kind of the speed of training that we offer.
Perfect. All right, that's good.
What other types of services do you, I mean digital technology
is really kind of transforming our industry right now in in
this space with you know hazmat, lots of service providers or
creating solutions like with the EPA with you know, hazardous
waste manifest, E manifest. I mean, are you involved with E
manifest type work or offering solutions from a digital
tracking? I mean, what talk a little bit
about that space, if you got anything there?
Yeah. I mean, we're, we're, we
communicate with FEMSA a lot. You know, FEMSA does, does ask
us for input on things. You know, we, we do communicate
with FEMSA for those sorts of things.
But from a technology perspective, are you using any
data automation or communication tools to help Mercy response and
improve the process? So we, we do some mass
certification coordination stuff for our customers to facilitate
their responses. You know, we we do look at
trends within the operation center because we do get a lot
of spills to kind of say, OK, well we need to do more training
on this. This could be an emerging threat
that we need to look at. You know, lithium ion batteries
I think was the first one that really that really benefited
from that because we noticed an uptick and said, OK, well we're
getting more of these things. There is not a resource out
there that we can point to. So, you know, we use that to
approach, you know, one of the industry groups and now we have
a mutual aid for lithium ion batteries that we can call 24/7.
We don't know the answer. We can call a specialist and
say, hey, can you talk to this responder and talk them through
the response for you, whatever battery chemistry they're
dealing with and you know, whatever size and the
circumstance of the incident. So that's been pretty helpful.
Any 3D augment reality type training modules for you know,
walking through a response that you know, you create and go
through exercises and drills. I mean VR, you know, glasses and
and gamification of training such a big deal now and and I
was curious if you guys are in in that space at all I.
Remember when I first started doing training at Chemtrak, I, I
think I probably use an early version of that.
It was, it was an outside vendor and it was kind of like a video
game where it was, I think the level of graphics of maybe
doomed to at best. And you know, you were walking
through a building that had various hazards.
I remember specifically there was a radiation room and you had
to choose the correct shielding based on the type of radiation.
But that was an outside partner. I'm not sure if we're if we're
doing anything with gamification or augmented reality, virtual
reality. OK.
All right. Just just trying to figure out
if you guys are going to get in that space to teach the young,
you know, the new young professionals coming in that are
really into that stuff. Yeah, Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's a different world training folks now that it
was when I first started, you know, when I first started was
here's your ERG, here's your safety data sheet.
Let's talk through things and things are things are a lot
different now. We do also offer, well, it's
not, you know, a virtual training tool.
We do have a drill and test call program.
So you know, if a fire department or response agency
wants to test us out or test their folks before they have to
call us, they can request a drill through our website.
And you know, we'll, we'll help guide them through the process
and help them make sure you know that the situation is realistic.
I think I had 115 years ago where they, they scheduled a
drill and I can't which, which agency it was or which
department. And they said, what happens if I
mix Sprite and VX together? And I said, well, I can try and
find you an answer, but I'm not sure if this would be a good
learning outcome for you. Let's talk about something more
realistic that you might actually deal with, right?
Like let's mix a corrosive in something else and figure out
what the end product is rather than soda and a neurotoxin,
right? Well, yeah, no, yeah.
It's good to kind of level set the expectations on those types
of drills. But Chemtrack operates globally,
right? So what unique challenges come
with supporting incidents across different countries and
languages and regulatory systems?
I mean, that's got to be very difficult.
Yeah, and it can be, you know, we do deal with a lot of
interpreters. You know, we have 200 plus
languages of interpreters. We have phone numbers that are
all over the world where someone can call a local phone number
that's toll free and get a hold of us.
And, you know, there's a lot of misunderstanding of, of danger
and getting a hold of contacts Sometimes with companies can be
a bit different because of differences in holidays, work
days, work hours. You know, for example, in the
Middle East in the summer, they work much earlier in the day.
So they are inside the afternoon, the hottest part of
the day. So, you know, trying to figure
out, OK, well, I have an incident that's in this country.
What phone number do I call for this person?
Am I going to reach out to their mobile number or their office
number? They're also cultural
differences from what I understand for some of the Asian
countries, they would rather go to the person they bought the
chemical from rather than call an emergency number that's on
the containers. They'll go to the guy down the
street that they bought it from and say, hey, I spilled it.
What I do about this, if they may eventually end up with us
when that person can't help them out.
But, you know, making sure that folks are calling the number and
understanding who they're getting can be difficult.
There's, you know, you see a phone number and you're looking
at a document. Maybe it's an English.
They may think that we're they're not going to speak our
language and you know, we will. We'll get an interpreter on the
line and that'll help us out. Obviously, interpreters tend to
slow things down because everything has to be said
multiple times. And one struggle is context.
I think if you're, if the interpreter is not hearing
something's going on in the background and they're not
thinking, hey, you know, that could be useful information.
Maybe they don't relay that to us.
And we, we guide the interpreters through this.
You know, if we are hearing a whole lot of talking and we're
hearing a whole lot of conversation in the background,
we'll say, hey, stop for a second, please tell me what's
going on. You know, that person in the
background sounds like there's banging or coughing or something
going on. Do you know what they're saying?
Can you ask what they're saying? Because that might be important
information where if the call was in English, we would hear
that we would know exactly what's going on.
So that can also be a difficulty or just general chemical
knowledge. Are they going to understand the
safety data sheet? Do they have the resources to
respond? You know, a truck turned over in
Spain is much shorter than a truck turned over in India,
right? Like Spain's got a lot more
emergency responders than than India does.
So trying to figure out how to best advise that person or or
give them decision support rather for the resources they
have available, that can also be a struggle.
Yeah. I mean, I got to imagine that is
a challenge. Do you find that most of your
clients that are here in the US are the ones working with you
globally? They're, they're basically
taking you from, you know, because they're a global firm.
Or is or are you seeing individual companies in like
Spain just reach out to you because you're you're, you
opened up shop there and they don't know, they don't really
have an understanding of your experience back here in the US.
Yeah. I mean, those smaller companies
and folks overseas may not know us.
So it might take a little bit to take to convince them or they
may not want to use us. But you know, a lot of our a lot
of our international folks are also North American folks or
it's a company that's based in Europe with the North American
division that's been using US forever.
And, and maybe they want to bring everything under 1 phone
number instead of having a bunch of phone numbers everywhere and
it all just routes to us. I.
Got you. Yeah, it makes sense.
So, you know, if we go back to training a bit, because to me
that seems to be one of the biggest challenges with the
industry is just understanding how to respond properly to
spills. What type of skills or knowledge
gaps are you seeing most often among responders and shippers?
Yeah. I mean, I think understanding
tools is I understand tools can be an issue, be it, you know,
meters or different monitors. You know, that's something I
think folks can brush up on a bit.
There's a lot of assumptions about those.
You know, particularly with responders.
You know, shippers aren't necessarily out there with, you
know, a few exceptions. They generally don't respond to
an incident. You know, one example I'll give
is there was a fire department that I was talking that had a
flammable spill and they were using a photo ionization
detector. And they said, well, you know, I
put absorbent on this stuff and I'm still getting flammable
vapors. You know, why am I still getting
flammable vapors? It's like, well, you're have you
ventilated and also you have to remove like the absorbents going
to absorb the material, but let's be taken out of there.
It's going to continue to release vapors.
You know, it's got walls in there.
So understanding what the tool is telling you and understanding
what you're doing, yes, absorbent is great.
You put absorbent on it, but the next step is removing that
contaminated absorbent from the situation or understanding how
to use conversion factors on meters and monitors.
That seems to be an issue sometimes where they're reading
an LEL. It's like, OK, well, what gas is
your meter calibrated to? Have you applied the conversion
factor to see if it works for whatever it is you're looking
for, right? Or more of an understanding of
the limitations of the ERG and I think the limitations of other
sort of documentation where you know, this fifty data sheet is a
good example, fantastic document that is your your primary
source. But folks need to understand the
the limitations of that, the limitations of the information
that's available on there and how to use that information
correctly. Talking about vapor pressure in
there, how does that apply to where you're at?
Are you taking temperature into account?
Are you taking altitude into account?
Is there ventilation in space? It's not as simple as looking at
section 9 and saying, OK, well, it's telling me this.
It's like, OK, it's telling me this, how does this apply to my
situation? Or, you know, properly applying
information about toxicology and understand that that's it's
giving you an LD50 and LC-50, but what does that really mean
for the population you're dealing with?
Do they have other risk factors? Understand that, yeah, this is
not generally tested on people, right?
It's tested on animals and their systems may be similar in some
ways, but it's not exact. So understanding when you're
looking at those sections of the safety data sheet, how they work
and how they work for your situation, that's I think
that's, that's a knowledge gap. And I think some folks are also
hesitant to have the fire department called from, you
know, the shipper manufacturer side of things because they
don't know what the fire department's going to do.
You know, there's just a lack of knowledge there of, you know,
everyone thinks the fire department is just put the wet
stuff on the red stuff. You know, that's, that's all
they know how to do. But fire departments are a lot
more dynamic now and they have a lot more skills available.
At the very least they can keep folks away from danger and maybe
they can put down dirt around drains and engage in whatever
minor response task they can do. And so you get more experienced
personnel on scene versus, you know, keeping everybody away,
not calling the fire department And it could be a truck driver
that's kind of sitting there and waiting, engaging in that
response and then being available to participate in any
way they can. An incident command.
You know, there's also that need there for companies to to
advise, you know, as part of Instant Commando.
OK, yeah, like you guys are in charge.
We're the product experts. This is what we would recommend.
This is how we can help you and just being ready to engage in
that if the need arises. Yeah, no, that's, that's really
good. I mean, there's a lot of
opportunity for, you know, training and, and I think that
the more, the more is better in a lot of ways.
And with hazardous materials, right, because that's what we're
talking about hazardous materials that are are, you
know, have a hazard that could be very detrimental to human
health in the environment. And, you know, how do we manage
and mitigate, you know, these types of hazards when there's a
spell? And that's, that's the key here
for what service you're offering is to help mitigate respond
quickly. Take care of the spill, be in
compliance with the, you know, 49 CFR, you know, regulations
when it when you know, for the customers, I mean, that's a big
thing. I mean, they, they got to know
that there's a way to, there's someone to call who can respond,
who has the knowledge. Not every manufacturer of
chemicals or I guess, you know, production people are really
that knowledgeable about how to deal with that.
You mean they know that they can make the chemical, but how do
you respond to spills? So that's a good, that's good.
It's a viable service, really good.
Well, when you look ahead Kevin, I mean you know what emergency,
what emerging risks or new chemicals or supply chain trends
or climate driven events are shaping Chemtrax priorities for
the next decade. Yeah, yeah.
I mean, you know, I hate to keep going back to lithium ion
batteries, but, you know, that's been a big one for a long time.
And that was a new, a new risk for everyone, right?
The the pandemic was also an interesting time.
You know, there were a lot more shipments of sanitizers going
out and cleaning chemicals, you know, the reagent and COVID
tests, the vaccine itself, you know, and dealing with incidents
involving those was different. You know, we had remember there
was one specific call from a fire department that was at a
motel and they said, hey, we had somebody that mixed a bunch of
stuff together and trying to make their own sanitizing
solution in a hotel room and it made something and just gas.
They went out of the floor and you know, we had to evacuate.
Are you sure it wasn't the meth lab that they're creating?
Yeah, we've, we've gotten those. Yeah, I've, I've certainly
taken, you know, meth lab calls and, you know, heroin
production, stuff like that. But, but, yeah, I mean, this was
everyone was trying to be their own backyard chemist.
Not everyone. A lot of people were trying to
be their own backyard chemist during the pandemic, you know,
So that was, that was kind of a unique for the time priority for
us because like, OK, we're getting more of this stuff now.
How do we navigate this? And the climate change is it's
changing the availability of products.
It's changing the way that products move.
Certainly, you know, extreme weather events and we have a
huge snowstorm coming to the East Coast Saturday into Sunday.
And, you know, that that may become more common.
You know, we certainly get calls after hurricanes, after
tornadoes, anytime that there's an ice storm or snow or
significant rain event. We get more calls from trucks,
you know, crashing and sliding off the roadway.
You know, we're, we're, we're able to assist in those
situations. You know, we've gotten calls.
There was one I took years ago from a fire department that was
along the Mississippi River Valley.
And they said, well, the floodwaters are receding and
there's tank cars on this train bridge that was submerged.
What's in them, you know, which was an extreme example, but that
sort of stuff does happen. And, you know, we may see more
of that with with climate change.
So you guys really you're connected to, well, you just
talked about the railroads and there are big shippers of, you
know, large volume of, of chemicals.
I mean you guys pretty well tied into the the Class 1 railroads.
Yeah, yeah, we have a great working relationship with all
the railroads. You know, we use ask Rail as
well. So we have that that so we can
we can hop in. We we get what I would consider
a surprise number of calls from citizens for rail cars that are
doing whatever it usually it's condensation coming out of the
heating coils or it's an airline that's leaking or is broken off
or it's a cryogenic car that is venting normally.
But, you know, we don't know that.
And prior to having Ask Rail, we had a book that showed all the
rail connections in the US and we would have to go and look at
a map of, you know, Missouri. Yeah.
OK, well maybe UP and another railroad and another in, you
know, a Class 3 railroad operate on this same main line.
You know, we would have to call each railroad and say is it
yours, is it yours? Is it yours?
And now we can just pop the tank car and say, OK, well this
railroad has this tank car, let's call them engage with this
railroad. Yeah, because ask Grills, that's
a great new tool that came out. You know what's been around a
little while, but that's a great tool.
Yeah, absolutely. That's that's really bad
response and that's real help for the first responder
community as well. I know they give many first
responders accounts, so you know they can figure out, you know,
what's in the car and whose it is in that moment to speed up as
well. That's good.
What the any, any parting shots
here you'd like to talk with the audience here about, you know,
the value and the benefit of, of, you know, working with
Chemtraq? Yeah, I mean, call us.
We're we're a one stop shop for, you know, incidents across the
entire life cycle of a chemical. You know, we're not just
transportation, you know, we help with incidents at
facilities, storage, production. You know, we can be a great
asset. Like I mentioned during extreme
weather events. Another I have a million stories
and I love telling them because, you know, I've been here for
long enough. I truly believe in the mission
of Chemtrack and what we do. I got a call from a first
responder that was outside of a factory that was hit by a
tornado. And, you know, the entire skin
of the building was missing. There were steel beams all over
the reaction vessels. There were drums all over the
place. And they said, well, what's in
this place? And I said, what company is it?
They gave us a company name. I called that company's contact.
He said, I know I'm on the way, but I'm at a roadblock right now
and the police won't let me through to get to my plant.
And I said, you know what? I'm putting the two of you
together and I got him into a conference call and this people
he was able to get through the roadblock to get to facility to
give in person assistance to that fire department.
Have our number handy for first responders.
Don't be afraid to call us. And that's EMS, that's emergency
managers, that is hazmat responders, guys riding the back
step. You know, we are more than happy
to help with running a station drill, participating in a hazmat
class, participating in just a station level drill.
If you're talking hazmat on the Sunday night that's slow and
you're going to the erg, give us a call.
We're the first number to call in the back.
Schedule a drill through us, with us, through our website.
We're here to help, is my main message here.
That's awesome. That's awesome, Kevin.
Well, ET Nation, that's a wrap. That's a wrap on our deep dive
in the chemtrak and the critical role they play in global
chemical safety. Conversations like this remind
us that emergency response isn't just about equipment and
training. It's also about information
coordination and the systems that bring experts together when
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