Safety Wars

Jim Poesl covers the eve of the 2026 midterms, predicting lawsuits and recounts while analyzing how consultants profit from extended campaigns. He breaks down Poland's constitutional crisis over EU integration and currency, warns of Russian drone attacks on Black Sea shipping, and features Feature Story News coverage of key Senate races. Poesl examines poll manipulation, covers new DOL rules on PBM transparency and apprenticeship funding, and explores AI's role in outsourcing emotional communication in dating. He also discusses therapy's influence on family estrangement trends and a fatal Learjet crash in Florida. The episode closes with a personal segment on two...

Host Jim Poesl opens with a tribute to Star Trek's Walter Koenig, who died at 90, then pivots to the real question: what's your plan when someone dies at work? He argues safety pros need pre-written scripts, attorney review, and empathy—not speculation about cause of death. Feature Story News covers Israeli elections as a referendum on October 7th, a US-brokered ceasefire in Ukraine, and Fed rate expectations. The DOL segment details $250K in mine safety grants, a $6.5M retirement plan consent order, and a USMCA labor win. EPA coverage spans PFAS technology strategy, $1.6T in deregulatory savings, Gelman Sciences co...

Jim Poesl covers workplace fatality preparedness—emergency contacts, pre-written plans, and advance funeral arrangements to spare loved ones from emotional decisions. News includes a deadly Spain train crash, Iran peace overtures via VP Vance, MSHA's clean record on mine violations, and EPA's rollback of Biden-era oil/gas rules. He also dives into U.S. nuclear readiness drills, UK conscription age extended to 65, poll manipulation ahead of midterms, and studies on AI travel planning, four-day workweeks, coconut jet fuel, and a 60-second Boeing 737 hack.

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This Oct 22, 2026 episode of *Safety Words* (Safety FM, Jim Poesl) covers suspicious letters sent to election offices, echoing the 2001 anthrax attacks, plus a Feature Story News roundup: UK websites down from a PHP vulnerability, French protest bans, Ohio's contentious governor race, and the US-China AI regulation debate. DOL updates include $81.5M rural workforce grants, $10.5M for mine safety training, tipped-employee rule changes, and prior authorization reform. OSHA cited Always Underground LLC $380K for trench violations; P&V Partitions owes $725K for denied overtime. VP Vance announced $1.3B in domestic fertilizer investment amid food security concerns. EPA news: RCRA modernization...

25 years after the 2001 anthrax attacks, Jim revisits the biological contamination event that shaped his career — and asks why we failed to learn from it. Drawing from the National Academy of Sciences' "Reopening Public Facilities After a Biological Attack," he walks through the timeline: the first victim at AMI in Boca Raton, the NBC letter addressed to Tom Brokaw, the Hart Senate Office Building shutdown, and the five lives lost. He reads Casey Chamberlain's firsthand account from O Magazine and Senator Tom Daschle's Wall Street Journal reflection on the attack that exposed 28 people and closed the Hart Building for 100 days. Th...

Jim hosts from a hotel lobby, covering the day's safety and regulatory news. He opens with his standard disclaimer about OSHA/EPA citations and presumption of innocence, then dives into political commentary on the upcoming elections and the cycle of unfulfilled promises.

Feature Story News covers Pope Leo's lung cancer surgery, US inflation at 3.7%, Taiwan's $4B Alaska LNG investment, Russian strikes on Ukraine, and Saudi-Houthi conflict escalation.

Jim follows up on the Christopher Boone Crimmins boom-truck manslaughter case, sharing field stories about equipment training and respirator fit-testing gone wrong...

In this episode of Safety Wars, Jim questions why both parties keep replaying the same playbook ahead of the 2026 midterms with no bold proposals. Feature Story News covers Pope Leo XIV's lung cancer diagnosis, Tupac Shakur's murderer sentenced, the Pentagon's plan to livestream an execution, and Houthi attacks in the Red Sea. Jim debuts two original songs—"On Vulture's Wings" and "Love is a Safe Workplace"—sharing the real incident that inspired the latter. New Labor Secretary Sonderling announces healthcare price transparency rules and suspends Microsoft and Adobe from the H-1B program. EPA updates include $90M for Chesapeake Bay...

Safety Wars: Cornell — Accountability Is Necessary, Prevention Takes More

In this 33-minute Safety Wars episode, host Jim examines the Cornell sexual assault case — dubbed the "Cornell Seven" — through a safety-investigation and human-organizational-performance (HOP) lens. Drawing on a Slate article by consultant Hannah Scotland, Pulsel argues that punishment alone won't prevent the next catastrophe: individuals may change, but conditions persist. He unpacks consent law, the role of intoxication, and perverse incentives that silence both victims and perpetrators. The episode draws direct parallels to workplace safety culture — where people walk by hazards, avoid rocking the boat, and face...

September 30 Hijacks, Hazmat, and Half-Truths

In this September 30 episode, host Jim covers the heroic Israeli plumber who landed a hijacked Flydubai flight after learning controls from a TV show, drawing parallels to post-9/11 aviation vigilance. He reports that OSHA's 2026 penalty inflation adjustment is canceled due to a federal funding lapse that prevented BLS from releasing required October data. Jim stresses the importance of up-to-date training materials, recounting an instructor using pre-2015 penalty figures and wrong confined-space standards — a red flag for anyone vetting OSHA outreach providers. He warns about salespeople overpromising compressed training timelines an...

This episode covers OSHA's citation of a Florida pipeline contractor after a fatal struck-by incident, willful lockout/tagout violations at a New Jersey car wash, and $65 million in community college training grants. Jim shares personal stories about noise survey failures at a warehouse that led to costly settlements, and an indoor air quality audit that debunked a cancer cluster at a law firm. The EPA segment covers glyphosate review, brownfields funding, and wetland grants. The episode closes with the Chemical Safety Board's investigation of the Foundation Food Group liquid nitrogen release that killed six workers, highlighting failures in monitoring...

Jim from Safety Wars covers soaring diesel prices, Trump's UN speech on Iran, and rising tanker insurance in the Strait of Hormuz. EPA updates include $82 million for San Francisco Bay watersheds, lead cleanups in Indiana and Montana, and a Clean Air Act settlement in Puerto Rico. For National Preparedness Month, Jim dives deep into disaster readiness: water storage strategies, emergency food and food safety, reading severe weather, lightning safety, flood preparedness, power outage management with generators and batteries, fuel handling dangers, and building community emergency networks. He shares personal stories from Superstorm Sandy throughout.

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Methylene Chloride, Muddy Rivers, and Diesel Spikes

**Summary:** Jim  is back from Vermont where he's working an EPA hazardous waste cleanup near the Beetlejuice filming location. The episode dives into the Fifth Circuit's overturning of EPA's methylene chloride rule, explaining why odor is an unreliable warning for the carcinogenic paint stripper and why air sampling—not your nose—should guide worker protection. Jim also covers a proposed $125M Passaic River Superfund settlement, a Hopewell Precision groundwater cleanup update, OSHA citations against a Chicago construction firm, and H-2A visa program violations. Rounding out the show...

On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Jim Poesl of Safety Wars shares his personal experience witnessing the attacks from Hoboken, then examines their lasting safety and policy legacy. He recounts the chaotic Ground Zero recovery, the lack of respirators, and Christine Todd Whitman's EPA assurances that the air was safe—despite warnings from industrial hygienist Jeffrey Olcott. Jim questions accountability, sovereign immunity, and whether lessons were applied to later crises like H1N1 and COVID-19, arguing preparedness capacity keeps eroding. A Feature Story News segment covers current events, including Saudi pipeline attacks, the 25th 9/11 memorial ceremonies, and global diplomacy. The ep...

Star Trek at 60: The Final Frontier Is Us

This episode of Safety Wars opens with Jim reflecting on attending the Star Trek Original Series Set Tour in Ticonderoga, NY for the franchise's 60th anniversary. He shares a written tribute arguing Star Trek was never really about space — it was about humanity's potential for cooperation over conquest. Drawing on a 2010 fan survey and the show's diverse cast of captains (Kirk, Picard, Sisko, Janeway, Archer, Pike, Burnham), he makes the case that Star Trek fandom carries a responsibility: to practice the diversity, courage, and principled leadership th...

Safety Wars 9-3-2026 When We Fail to Watch Out for Each Other

Jim opens Safety Wars discussing the Lindsay Clancy postpartum mental health trial, arguing society readily condemns individual mental health crises while ignoring the ~5,000 annual workplace deaths caused by negligent leaders. He connects this to broader failures in caring for coworkers, wives, and family. News segments cover an Iran-US missile strike investigation, El Niño's persistence, Indonesian wildfires, and NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Telescope launch. Department of Labor updates include a $733,000 wage recovery for Florida restaurant workers and weekly u...

This episode of Safety Wars opens with disaster preparedness tips for National Preparedness Month, covering assessing hazards, building emergency plans, and stocking 72–96 hours of supplies at home and work. A quick news roundup follows, touching on US-Iran tensions, the Ebola outbreak in the DRC, Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong's guilty plea, Nepal's landslide death toll, and NASA's newly launched Roman Space Telescope.

The core segment examines a tragic Minnesota case: a tree-trimming worker was criminally charged with manslaughter after fatally crushing a coworker's head while "playing" with a hydraulic grapple's shadow, mimicking shadow puppets. The host uses th...

 Safety Wars – August 26, 2026 (Simple Sabotage Edition): How Saboteurs Hide in Plain Sight at Work

Jim Poesl opens with FSN Radio News: Meta's $18B child-safety settlement with 29 states, Canada's retaliatory tariffs on the US, Prince Harry and Meghan's return to Britain, and new US sanctions on Iran. He then digs into RFK Jr.'s public clash with PA Governor Shapiro over measles deaths and vaccine misinformation, questioning whether 2026's rising measles case counts reflect real trends or reporting shifts. OSHA news follows: a Pennsylvania brick manufacturer faces ~$500K in fines for willfully exposing workers to sil...

Safety Wars 8-25-2026 Dolly's Legacy, OSHA's Deadly Kettle Fines

This episode of Safety Words opens with a tribute to Dolly Parton, who passed away at 80, highlighting her advocacy for literacy and education. The show then covers international news: US Treasury sanctions targeting entities tied to Iranian oil smuggling and nuclear procurement, Pakistan's efforts to broker US-Iran peace talks, and China-India border negotiations. A segment on the Democratic Socialists of America examines the movement's growing influence within Democratic politics.

The host shifts to health and workplace safety topics, including...

Safety Wars 8-19-2026 AI Data Centers, Flock Cameras, and the War on Common Sense

Summary:

This episode of Safety Wars covers a wide-ranging mix of safety culture, tech policy, and current events. Jim opens with disclaimers and housekeeping before discussing how to handle difficult or psychopathic personalities in the workplace—stressing immediate, professional responses rather than escalating to HR.

The show moves into news headlines: Iran weighing strikes on U.S. assets in Europe, Harry and Meghan's return to the UK, a Meta wh...

**Summary:**

This episode of Safety Wars opens with a call to speak up—both in society and on the job—before diving into news headlines covering Iran-U.S. tensions, the Meta youth mental health trial, and Ukraine's drone strikes on Moscow. The host then shifts to the core theme: safety professionals often become "victims of their own success," letting bullying or intimidation from workers go unaddressed because past professionals stayed silent. Through personal anecdotes—including turning a complainer's own NFPA objections back on him and confronting a job-site intimidator named John—the host argues problems...

Summary: This Safety Wars episode covers Trump's executive order overhauling childhood vaccine recommendations, splitting the MMR shot into three doses and cutting recommended vaccines from 18 to 11. Only six vaccines retain full recommendations. Critics like Senator Bill Cassidy call the order unscientific and dangerous, while the White House cites comparisons to peer nations.

The host revisits a December 2025 hepatitis B deep dive, since ACIP recently ended universal birth-dose vaccination for infants of hepatitis B-negative mothers, shifting to individual decision-making. He reviews hepatitis B basics, declining infection rates since 1991, and CDC's rationale.

Title: Who Enforced the Pandemic? COVID-19 Accountability and the Safety Professionals Left Behind

Summary:

Jim Poesl examines Dr. Fauci's Senate hearing on COVID-19, where he invoked the Fifth Amendment 111 times despite a federal pardon. Rather than pursuing "pain for pain," Jim argues real accountability requires harder questions about evidence, authority, and decision-making. He critiques how "face coverings" were promoted instead of proper NIOSH-rated respirators, sidestepping OSHA's respiratory protection standards and creating dangerous confusion between masks, filtration, and fit. He also examines school closures, inconsistent vaccine messaging, and oversight failures in NIH/EcoHealth funding of Wuhan...

Summary: In this special live episode, Jimmy Poesl reacts to Dr. Fauci's Senate testimony, where Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment despite having immunity and a pardon. Poesl argues safety professionals were unfairly blamed for enforcing pandemic policies they didn't create, damaging trust between workers and safety staff. He critiques how COVID communication ignored established respiratory protection science (NIOSH standards, mask filtration mechanisms) in favor of unproven mandates, and how "zero" safety goals replaced honest messaging about capacity and resilience. Drawing parallels to behavior-based safety failures, he says workers were blamed instead of addressing systemic issues, and perverse incentives...

Jim opens Safety Wars with legal disclaimers before riffing on simulation theory, prompted by a Safety FM symposium with Todd Conklin, Nick Weatherly, and Jay Allen, exploring manipulation, behavior-based safety vs. human/organizational performance, and coincidences suggesting we're "living in a simulation." He covers Supreme Court security concerns tied to threats against justices, then transitions into world news: US strikes on Iran, EU gold sanctions on Sudan, World Cup semifinals, and Strait of Hormuz shipping fees. The bulk of the episode reviews recent OSHA/DOL citations — a fatal crawl-space excavation death, confined space violations at Fleet Pride, and cheap-fix sa...

Safety Wars 7-9-2026 

Safety Wars Recap: Paperwork, Fitness Tests, and Flock Cameras

Jim  opens Safety Wars with disclaimers on OSHA/EPA citations, then covers severe flooding in the Northeast, including the washed-out Palisades Parkway near West Point — a reminder to know local roads and have backup routes.

The main segment focuses on safety paperwork, invoking Marshall McLuhan's idea that "the medium changes the message." Jim argues records like OSHA 300 logs, SDS sheets, training matrices, and emergency plans aren't bureaucratic clutter — they're an organization's memory and evidence, becomi...

Safety Wars 7-8-2026 Safe+Sound Week, HHS News and the Presidential Fitness Test Returns

im opens this July 8th episode of Safety Words with a legal disclaimer about citations and news sourcing, then previews Monday's live Reality Shift event in Orlando featuring Nick Weatherly, Todd Conklin, and Jay Allen. He highlights OSHA's Safe+Sound Week (August 10-16), detailing program challenges and benefits for workplace safety culture, while criticizing behavior-based safety programs as subjective compared to objective hazard identification.

The show shifts to FSN news: Trump ending the Iran ceasefire, NATO tensions...

Whale Rescue, Building Collapse & the "Missing Middle": Safety Wars Breaks Down This Week's Wildest Headlines

Jim kicks off with a wild story from his home turf in New Jersey — Carteret firefighters had to be rescued after their Marine Unit boat was struck and sunk by a surfacing whale near the Arthur Kill. He riffs on the irony that whales and even pods of them are now returning to waters he grew up swimming and crabbing in during the polluted 1970s-90s, crediting cleanup efforts spurred partly by former NJ Governor Jim McGreevey's fight to sh...

Safety Wars Live 6-30-2026 Monsanto v. Darnell, Birthright Citizenship, and Why Demographics Are Destiny

On this episode of Safety Wars Jim opens with a legal deep-dive into Monsanto Company v. Darnell, a Supreme Court decision (6-3, opinion by Kavanaugh) holding that federal FIFRA labeling requirements preempt Missouri state tort claims requiring Roundup cancer warnings, since the EPA had approved the label without one. Justice Jackson dissented, arguing this expands federal preemption beyond congressional intent.

The host then covers FSN news briefs: the Supreme Court striking down Trump's birthright citizenship executive order (6...

Summary:

In this episode of Safety Wars, host Jim opens with a personal note about his son's middle school moving-up ceremony before diving into the week's regulatory news. He covers a Department of Labor consent order requiring three Maine sports bars to pay over $51,000 in back wages for wage and child labor violations, and a $1.73 million recovery for 1,666 workers at a Ford EV battery plant whose employer improperly excluded bonuses from overtime calculations. Jim also flags a call for public input from the Office of Workers' Compensation Programs on hearing loss evaluation methods.

Safety in Context — Explaining the "Why" to Build Compliance

In this episode of Safety Wars, Jim  opens with reflections on a Father's Day baseball tournament before diving into a core safety philosophy: the critical importance of explaining the "why" behind safety rules. Using real-world examples — a fatal confined space incident at the Valero refinery in Delaware, mercury vapor exposure on job sites, and PPE compliance challenges — Jim argues that simply issuing rules without context leads to non-compliance. He draws on Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) principles, emphasizing peer-to-peer communication over top-down mandates.

In this episode of Safety Wars, host Jim opens with personal reflections — marking four years since his father's passing and celebrating his Aunt Sophie's 90th birthday. He then dives into a Wall Street Journal story about a fermented food diet sweeping through Trump's cabinet, including RFK Jr., JD Vance, and others swearing by sauerkraut and grass-fed meat for dramatic health results.

Jim pivots to the New York Knicks' first NBA championship since 1973, using Karl Anthony Towns' journey from St. Joseph's High School to NBA stardom as a lesson for safety professionals: surround yourself with people who elevate yo...

Safety Wars — June 17, 2026: Labor Violations, EPA Cleanups, Iran Deal Fallout & More

In this wide-ranging episode of Safety Wars, host Jim covers breaking news and regulatory updates across labor, environmental, and geopolitical fronts.

On the labor side, the U.S. Department of Labor secured a $750,000 federal court judgment against four Washington State restaurants for wage theft, overtime violations, child labor law infractions, and retaliatory termination. Jim also covers DOL demands to governors across all 53 states and territories to crack down on unemployment insurance fraud, spotlighting California's $20 billion in alleged federal debt, New York's 20%-plus im...

Safety Wars – June 16, 2026: US-Iran Ceasefire Deal, Nyack Tunnel Girls, and Rising Antisemitism

In this episode of Safety Wars, host Jim Poesl covers three main topics. First, he breaks down the emerging US-Iran memorandum of understanding, walking through a 12-point framework reported by the New York Post and Al Arabiya that outlines a ceasefire, temporary sanctions relief, Strait of Hormuz passage guarantees, and a 60-day negotiation window. He notes mixed reactions from Iranian dissidents, Israeli officials, and G7 leaders, and raises questions about whether Iran — despite devastating losses — has come out politically stronger. 

Host Jim opens with a rallying cry for safety professionals to develop backbone and resist servile behavior on the job site. He promotes Safety FM's upcoming Reality Shift symposium featuring Todd Conklin, Nick Weatherly, and Jay Allen, and reviews breaking world news — including U.S.-Iran tensions, rising inflation, and the EU's ruling against Meta. Jim covers Acting Labor Secretary Sonderling's G7 appearance in Geneva, highlighting a pro-American negotiating posture on workforce and trade. He previews "Ancient Safety Professionals" Episode 2, a satirical take on the "Cult of Zero" incident reporting culture. The show also reviews EPA cleanup actions in Cl...

Safety Wars 6-9-2026 Safety Theater Is Killing People

Host Jim Poesl returns after a hiatus to address listener comments and cover recent safety and news topics. He opens by critiquing micro-level accident prediction models, arguing they're inherently flawed because safety professionals correct hazards as they find them, skewing any data. He stresses that without authority to hire, fire, or discipline, safety pros have limited power to change workplace culture.

Jim shares a story about a roofing subcontractor who threatened workers for enforcing fall protection, illustrating how cost-cutting overrides...

Safety Wars Live 5-26-2026

Jim critiques "zero incident" culture through a satirical "Ancient Safety Professionals" video segment, arguing that zero-injury programs often suppress reporting rather than prevent harm.

Jim challenges the safety industry's over reliance on trend data and statistics, using a roulette analogy to illustrate how injury patterns are often unpredictable — focusing on hand injuries won't prevent the next foot injury. He warns against treating workers as machines to be fixed and emphasizes understanding systemic context over individual blame.

A "Safety Tarot" se...

Overview: Jim Poesl hosts this episode of Safety Wars, a safety industry podcast/videocast with a satirical bent.

Key segments:

Safety Wars 5/20/26 Blame vs. Solutions,  NY Construction Deaths & WHO Update

In this May 20, 2026 episode of Safety Wars, host Jim Poesl opens with a discussion on the ineffectiveness of employee-blaming in accident investigations, advocating instead for systemic fixes rooted in HOP (Human and Organizational Performance) principles. He illustrates this with a practical story about ladder label compliance — showing how education and pragmatic problem-solving beat antagonism and job shutdowns.

Jim then covers breaking news, including OSHA's investigation into a worker fatality at SpaceX's Starbase launch site in South Texas, noting that a full rep...

Safety Wars  5-19-2026  Part 1 Interview with Jennifer Coffey President, NJ School of Conservation

This is part of our ongoing mission to educate, inform and motivate our supporters.

Today Jim welcomes Jennifer Coffey, Executive Director of ANJEC and board president of the Friends of the New Jersey School of Conservation, joins host Jim to discuss the proposed elimination of the NJ School of Conservation from Governor Cheryl's budget. Located in Stokes State Forest, the 77-year-old facility serves 5,000 students annually — 50% from Title I schools — offering outdoor environmental education, teacher continuing educat...