Michael Karl McNeil

Three courses were added to my training record this week. They are listed here the way everything else on this blog is listed: by name, by issuer, and by the number a reader can check. Death Investigation Training Academy Foundations of Environmental Death Investigations , issued 29 September 2026. The Missouri POST Program accepts it for approved-provider training credit under Control Number 31578, 1.5 hours in Technical Studies. The American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators accepts it for 1.5 hours of continuing education, approval number 26-117. Environmental Asphyxiation and Entrapment Deaths , issued 29 September 2026. Missouri POST Control Number 31574, one hour in Technical Studies; ABMDI approval number 26-116, one hour. CDC TRAIN Investigation and Certification of Drug Toxicity Deaths , course WB4884, completed 28 September 2026. The certificate is one of completion. CDC TRAIN prints on its face that it conveys no continuing-education credit, and I list it the sam...

Most safety failures in California end as a citation against the company. Penal Code section 387 is the exception worth knowing, because it is written for the individual manager as well as the corporation, and it turns on one thing: what that person actually knew and did nothing about. What the statute makes a crime Section 387(a) applies to "any corporation, limited liability company, or person who is a manager with respect to a product, facility, equipment, process, place of employment, or business practice." The offense has two parts. First, the defendant has "actual knowledge of a serious concealed danger" that falls under an agency's regulatory authority. Second, the defendant knowingly fails, within 15 days of acquiring that knowledge, or immediately where there is imminent risk of great bodily harm or death, to do two things: inform the Division of Occupational Safety and Health in writing, and warn affected employees in writing. Both duties apply. Te...

A corrosive splash does not give anyone time to look for help. California's requirement is written around that fact, and it is stricter and more specific than most employers realize. Two separate sections of Title 8 apply, and an employer can satisfy one while violating the other. Section 5162 sets the equipment standard Section 5162 governs emergency eyewash and shower equipment. Subsection (a) requires eyewash facilities meeting ANSI Z358.1-1981 where the eyes of an employee may be exposed to corrosive or toxic substances. The subsection then closes a gap that turns up on inspection after inspection: water hoses, sink faucets, or showers are not acceptable eyewash facilities. Personal eyewash units are permitted, but only as a supplement to the required equipment, never in place of it. Subsection (b) carries the same logic to the body. Where skin may be exposed to corrosive or toxic substances during routine operations or foreseeable emergencies, an emergency shower comply...

By Michael Karl McNeil, REP, RIH, EPP, QSD Most California employers know that noise is regulated. Fewer know that Title 8 draws two different lines, at two different levels, and that the lower of the two is the one that creates most of the obligations. Article 105 of the General Industry Safety Orders, Sections 5095 through 5100, sets a permissible exposure limit at 90 decibels and an action level at 85. The 90-decibel line governs what you must do about the noise itself. The 85-decibel line governs what you must do about the people exposed to it, and that is the hearing conservation program. The two numbers Section 5095(b) defines the action level as an 8-hour time-weighted average of 85 decibels measured on the A-scale, slow response, or the equivalent dose of fifty percent. Section 5096 sets the exposure limits in Table N-1: 90 dBA for eight hours, with the permitted time halving for every five decibels above that, so 95 dBA is limited to four hours and 100 dBA to two. Under ...

The single word that decides what a Cal/OSHA citation costs is its classification. A general violation and a serious violation can describe the same condition on the same day and differ by an order of magnitude in penalty. Under the penalty schedule operative 1 January 2025, a general or regulatory violation runs up to $16,285, while a serious violation runs up to $25,000 from an $18,000 base, and a willful or repeat violation reaches $162,851. So the classification is where the argument belongs. And the law puts the employer on the back foot before it starts. The presumption Labor Code section 6432(a) creates a rebuttable presumption that a serious violation exists if the Division demonstrates that there is a realistic possibility that death or serious physical harm could result from the actual hazard created by the violation. Note how little that requires. Not that harm occurred. Not that harm was likely. A realistic possibility that it could result. In practice the Division...

One of the most useful facts in Cal/OSHA practice is also one of the least known: an employer contesting a citation in California does not have to be represented by a lawyer. California Title 8 section 378(a) of the California Code of Regulations says it directly: "A party may appear in person or through a representative who is not required to be an attorney at law." The representative files a written notice of representation with the Appeals Board's Sacramento office and serves the other parties. That is the whole mechanism. There is a second point worth making alongside it, because employers get it wrong constantly. The Division of Occupational Safety and Health issues the citation. The Occupational Safety and Health Appeals Board hears the appeal. They are separate bodies. Employers lose weeks arguing their case to the district office that cited them, under the impression that this is the appeal, and it is not. The federal rule In states where federal OSHA ha...

Employers who receive a Cal/OSHA citation tend to ask two questions in the wrong order. The first one asked is almost always "how much is the penalty." The one that should come first is whether the citation was issued in time at all. The statute Labor Code section 6317 says it in one sentence: "A citation or notice shall not be issued by the division more than six months after the occurrence of the violation." Read the operative words. The clock runs from the occurrence of the violation . It does not run from the inspection, from the closing conference, from the date the file was assigned to a compliance officer, or from the date the Division finished its paperwork. An inspection opened in month five over conditions that existed in month one does not buy the Division another six months. Why this gets missed Because the inspection date is the date everyone has in front of them. It is on the correspondence, it is what the employer remembers, and it is what g...

My name is Michael Karl McNeil. I work in environmental health and safety, industrial hygiene, emergency planning and forensic consulting, and I have been in occupational health and safety since 1989. This page is my own account of that record, written by me and kept current. Two careers, in order The first was the fire service — twenty-five years of it, ending as a Fire Battalion Chief. I came up through fire prevention, advanced to Fire Prevention Captain and then to Battalion Chief in a federal fire organization. Assignments took me across the country, most of them in the Western states, working under whichever state's rules governed the ground I was standing on. That is where the multi-state side of what I do now comes from: it is not a marketing radius, it is where I have actually worked. The qualifications from those years that still matter are the incident ones — hazardous materials specialist and hazardous materials incident commander, wildland qualifications carried ...