ModulesExternal LessonsReport & Learn
Learn from accidents elsewhere.Every lesson keeps its source, and every talk keeps its lesson.
For EHS teams who want crews to hear about other plants’ accidents before they have their own: read the item, open the full report, or start a safety talk from it. Nothing reaches the crew until your team edits and publishes it.
- Source
- U.S. Chemical Safety Board
- Signal type
- Publication
- Summary
- After a fatal dust explosion at a corn mill in 2017, the CSB asks industry, regulators and workers how dust hazards are managed. Witnesses at several sites believed their plant was too clean for it to happen.
- Keywords
- combustible dust, housekeeping, explosion, fatality
- Country
- United States
- Industry sector
- Food and grain
Open the CSB publication
Create safety talkAn example item and draft; the fields are the product’s, the summary is paraphrased and the talk text illustrative.
Where it connects
Talks also start from: Incident Investigation and 41 more modules in one workspace.
Method note
The full report, or the short story? They reach different people.
People who study accidents say summaries make readers feel immune, and that the lesson is in the detail. Supervisors say long reports never get read out.
Leandro · Founder, UProcess
A field study of toolbox talks found that short scripted versions of fatal-incident reports were easier for supervisors to deliver. The two views meet: depth for the engineer who must change the plant, a short story for the crew who must change the job.
So each item links to the full report and can become a short talk.
- Read the itemSource, date and summary, with the link to the official report.
- Case of the monthOne case told in depth, for the people who need the detail.
- Talk it throughA safety talk draft with the item’s title, summary and source, edited before anyone sees it.
Where learning from others usually breaks
Four places another plant’s lesson gets lost, and what the record does about each.
“It could never happen here.”
In its call to action on combustible dust, the CSB reports witnesses at several sites saying the plant was the cleanest it had ever been, and that nobody thought it would happen to them.
Source: U.S. Chemical Safety Board, call to action
In UProcess New CSB publications are read into the feed every day, so the reports reach your team without someone having to go looking.
Feed · CSB
- Read
- Every day
- Last run
- 5 Nov 2026, 06:00
- New today
- 1 item
The source comes to you.
The accident was already in someone else’s report.
The CSB found the sugar industry had known of dust explosion hazards since at least 1925, and cited earlier explosions at other sugar plants before Port Wentworth.
Source: U.S. Chemical Safety Board
In UProcess Items stay in the feed with their source and date, and can be filtered by signal type and keyword.
Filter the feed
- Signal type
- Publication
Each item with its source and date.
A headline is not a lesson.
A Hazards 30 paper on five decades of the Loss Prevention Bulletin argues that summaries can leave readers feeling immune, while in-depth case studies show the small slips behind major accidents.
Source: Macleod, IChemE Hazards 30 (2020)
In UProcess Every item keeps the link to the official report, and the case of the month tells one case in depth.
Call to action: combustible dust
- Source
- U.S. Chemical Safety Board
- Publication
- Open the CSB publication
- Case of the month
- Told in depth, with the barriers that failed
The summary points to the detail, never replaces it.
The report is too long to read out.
In a field study, supervisors preferred short scripted toolbox guides to long-form investigation reports, and said the guides saved about fifteen minutes of preparation and delivery.
Source: Toolbox talks study, Safety Science 86 (2016)
In UProcess Create a safety talk from the item: a draft with its title, summary and a source note, which your team edits before it is published.
TK-0061 · Draft
- Title
- It was the cleanest it had ever been
- Key message
- Dust you can see on a ledge is fuel. Clean it before it reaches the floor, every shift.
- Source
- From an external lesson · CSB
Made in one step. Edited before it is published.
External lesson CSB · Call to action: combustible dustTalk TK-0061 · Published 10 Nov 2026
| Talk | Source | Status | Published |
|---|---|---|---|
| TK-0061 · It was the cleanest it had ever been | External lesson · CSB, call to action on combustible dust | Published | 10 Nov 2026 |
The record an auditor asks for.
Learning from others is credible when you can show what you did with it.
- Which external lessons became talks, and when.
- Each talk with the source it came from.
- The item each talk came from, with its source link.
- Whether each talk is a draft or published.
What’s in an external lesson
- Sources
- Official investigation bodies. The CSB is read every day.
- Item
- Title, summary, source, date and the link to the publication. The same item for every company.
- Signal type
- Incident, report, publication, alert or lesson learned. Words like fatality stay in the keywords.
- Filters
- Signal type, keyword, search and this month.
- To a talk
- One step to a safety talk draft. The talk keeps the item as its source.
Questions
Where do the items come from?
From official sources. New CSB publications are read in every day.
Can we edit an item?
No. Items are the same for everyone. You edit the talk you make from one.
Does a talk go out on its own?
No. It starts as a draft, and nothing is shared until your team publishes it.
Does it tell me which lessons apply to my plant?
No. Your team decides what is relevant. The item gives you the source to judge it.