The Personal Situation

This book is a report of the scientific aspects of the disease itself (see Part I What Is MCS ) and a journal of personal experiences and an ethnography of life with MCS (see Part 11 The Personal Situation and Part III The Voices of Others). It contains tips, advice and information in several fields, and important addresses and links for the MCS patient (see Part IV The ABCs of MCS, Part V Films, Books and Other Resources, Part VI Further Resources). In conclusion, Part VII Providing Information to Others, is a guide that may help to inform others. 

If you can no longer go outdoors, it s still very important to entertain yourself with something. Find hobbies that are still possible or pick up the activities that you never got around to but always wanted to do, which you ll have all the time in the world for now. There is more out there than you think. It s often just a matter of realigning your perspectives and learning to look for that which you can still do. Also see Part II The Personal Situation and Part III The Voices of Others. 

From the commencement of the fog and low visibility, many people experienced difficulty breathing, the effects occurring more or less simultaneously over a large area of hundreds of square kilometers. The rise in the number of deaths (Fig. 18-4) paralleled the mean daily smoke and sulfur dioxide concentrations daily deaths reached a peak on December 8 and 9, with many of them related to respiratory troubles. Although the deaths decreased when the concentrations decreased, the deaths per day remained considerably above the pre-episode level for some days. Would most of the persons who died have died soon afterward anyway If this were the case, a below-normal death rate would h ve occurred following the episode. This situation did not seem to exist, but detailed analysis was complicated by increased deaths in January and February 1953 which were attributed primarily to an influenza outbreak. 

It is strongly recommended to keep the source between the exhaust and the person. When the source is quite close to the person and between the person and the exhaust, the airflow around the person could generate a wake that includes the source or the generated contaminant and thereby the person s exposure could increase (see Fig. 10.3). In these cases, it is better to use a side exhaust, where the person is situated beside the shortest path from source to exhaust. 

For workbenches or laboratory fume hoods with auxiliary supply it is the working person w ho could break the shielding curtain, and in that way contaminants are transported from the interior of the exhaust hood to the space where the person is situated. 

This chapter describes accidents caused by those slips and lapses of attention that even well-trained and well-motivated persons make from time to time. For example, they forget to close a valve or close the wrong valve. They know what they should do, want to do it, and are physically and mentally capable of doing it. But they forget to do it. Exhortation, punishment, or further training will have no effect. We must either accept an occasional error or change the work situation so as to remove the opportunities for error or to make errors less likely. 

Having selected the right sponsor and identified key advocates, the next task is to sell them on the concept of PSM—and the need for an effective system within your company. The first step in any selling situation is to know your audience. It is up to you to do some informal research on the person or people you want to endorse PSM look for insights into their business priorities, their track records with comparable initiatives, and their professional backgrounds. This will help you ... 

Detailed procedures will only be required in unusual situations where the usual rules of thumb do not apply and the worker is likely to be in the knowledge-based mode. In Chapter 4, and case study 3 in Chapter 7, a systematic framework for developing procedures, in which their format and content is based on a detailed analysis of the tasks to be performed and the normal skill level of the person who will perform the tasks, will be described. 

An alternative way to improve the situation, however, is to ask an expert to write a comprehensive article in which he explains his view on.a subject freely and without limitation of space. The emphasis in this case would be on the personal ideas of the author. This is the approach that has been attempted in this new series. We hope that as a consequence of this approach, the series may become especially stimulating for new research. 

Recognize that people have certain capabilities the law says that people have equal rights (so it reads that we were all equal since 1776) but some interpret it to mean equal capabilities. So it has been said via Sun Tzu, The Art of War, about 500 BC Now the method of employing people is to use the avaricious and the stupid, the wise and the brave, and to give responsibilities to each in situations that suit the person. Do not charge people to do what they cannot do. Select them and give them responsibilities commensurate with their abilities. ... 

With plastics that decompose, there may be hazards such as personal bums or wounds and air contamination. Faulty controllers and/or freeze-off can cause the overheating situation from a burned out heater. Safety devices should be used that alert the plant when problems develop people have to be aware of these possible situations. Recognize that personnel injury in plants due to machinery represents 10% of all accidents (Fig. 8-77). 

The hardware situation continued to evolve. Personal computers became ever more powerful in terms of speed and the amount of random access memory (RAM) and hard drive capacity. The price of PCs continued to fall. Clusters of PCs were built. Use of the open-source Linux operating system spread in the 1990s. Distributed processing was developed so a long calculation could be farmed out to separate machines. Massively parallel processing was tried. All these changes meant that the days of the supercomputers were numbered. 

How could the person/persons in the scenario have avoided getting into the particular situation ... 

Any situation that participants might find themselves in could present potential risks. Warning signs and labels are a common feature of everyday life but their very commonness lessens their impact. Some situations, however, come with no such warnings attached and the risks may be less obvious, but still need serious consideration. Teachers and group leaders should be sensitive to the possibility that some participants may have had personal experience of one or more of the risky situations included. 

The three-way catalyst and the NOx storage-reduction catalyst represent remarkably successful catalytic technology. The catalysts are unique in that they have to operate under a wide range of conditions, depending on type of use, personal driving style, local climate, etc. This in contrast to the usual situation in industry, where conditions are optimized and kept constant. 

The movement of the test substance during the course of a Held residue study must be tracked to assure that the integrity of the test substance is maintained [40 CFR 160.185(a)(10)]. The COC can be accomplished in a number of ways. In the simplest situation, every person signs their name on a piece of paper that accompanies the test substance when they handle the test substance. Eventually the COC will list the names of all those who handled the test substance during the course of the study. Shipment, receipt, weighing, and final disposition of the test substance container must all be tracked and promptly recorded if an unbroken COC is to be present at the end of the trial. The completed COC becomes an essential part of the field residue trial record. 

Briefly, the dual-interaction approach postulates that two interactions — that between biology and environment and that between person and situation — work together to determine behavior. The Person and the Situational context interact to determine behavior in the short term. The Person, in turn, is a product of developmental factors that are both Biologi-... 

Arousal and cognition cross with the state-trait distinction in the Region-of-Intrapersonal Interaction to permit both state and trait forms of both arousal and cognition. The model places the Person in a Situational context, and both the Person and the Situation contribute separately and interactively to both physiological functioning and behavior. 

The use of computers for equipment design and for planning schedules (CPM, PERT) has already been discussed. A number of other situations where computers are useful follow. No attempt will be made to indicate how computer programs should be written. However, I shall attempt to show what must be considered both by the person who writes and the one who uses the program. 

This letter was answered personally both by Charles E. Sorenson, general manager of the Ford Company of Dearborn, and by Edsel Ford. They congratulated him on his "remarkable achievement" in "guiding our business in the unusual situation that it is in... 

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