Lithium-Ion Batteries: Navigating the Risks Safety Leaders Should Address

How prepared is your organization for the growing risks associated with lithium-ion batteries? 

In this episode of Beyond Prequalification, David Tibbetts, CSP, sits down with Miki Alroy, Founder of Commonwealth Risk Management Group and President of the ASSP Greater Boston Chapter, to discuss why lithium-ion battery safety has become one of the construction industry's most important emerging risks. 

Drawing from his experience in hazardous materials response, environmental remediation, and construction safety, Miki explains what causes thermal runaway, why traditional fire protection methods often fall short, and the practical steps organizations can take to reduce risk before an incident occurs. From charging and storage practices to inspections, emergency planning, and battery procurement, the conversation explores how companies can build safer systems without adding unnecessary complexity. 

Whether you're an owner, general contractor, safety leader, or trade partner, this episode offers practical guidance on identifying lithium-ion battery risks, strengthening emergency preparedness, and building proactive safety programs that keep pace with rapidly evolving technology. 

Learn more at highwire.com. 

Transcript

[00:00:14] David Tibbetts: Welcome, everybody, to the next episode of Beyond Prequalification. I'm David Tibbetts, Chief Safety Officer here at Highwire. 

I'm very excited to have a fellow Bostonian on the podcast with me today, Miki Alroy. 

Miki and I have connected a couple times recently at the ASSP National Conference, which we'll talk a little bit more about. And it's been really great connecting. 

One of the things we like to do at the start of these is kind of talk about our guest's journey as safety professionals. 

I think we all know that many of us have really interesting paths that kind of got us to where we are today. You know, few of us knew going into college that we were gonna end up in safety. We knew that safety was a career. I would say that that is not the majority of us, right? But we found our way here to a career that we ultimately end up becoming quite passionate about. 

Your path has certainly been interesting, Miki. So if you could share a little bit about your journey from being a geology major in college, right, to the creation of Commonwealth Risk Management Group. If you could share that journey with us, that'd be fantastic. 

[00:01:24] Miki Alroy: Absolutely. 

I got into safety through the environmental health and safety route. Fishing has always been a big part of my life. I'm a big saltwater fisherman these days, but back when I was young and couldn't get out to saltwater on my own, I used to fish freshwater. You know, I was probably like 10 or 12 years old, fishing in Newton on the Charles River, when I saw a landscaping company back up a tanker truck, open a valve, and unload some liquids into the river and dump into it. And looking back, it just really got me a little frustrated to see someone polluting our local watershed. 

And so right then and there, you know, I thought that starting a career trying to save the environment and save this beautiful ecosystem that we have was what I wanted to do. So that led me to studying geology in college. I went to school at Hobart College, which is a small liberal arts school in upstate New York. 

I was a teaching assistant for three years in the geology program, which really kind of... something that I continue to love to do is to teach and mentor, and I think I get that from my dad, who used to be a professor. And when I graduated from school, I started professionally with GZA GeoEnvironmental, which is a multidisciplinary consulting firm out of Boston, and was on their field group. 

Which initially, I started out in construction management, and I remember I got hired on my birthday, which was December 8th, and within two weeks I was up in Maine on a river, the Kennebec River at Bath Iron Works. And they had a huge, huge project up there, which was a Clark-Atkinson joint venture. GZA GeoEnvironmental was acting as owner's rep, and I was put on a barge to help do construction management for precast pile installation. 

So we were basically drilling rock sockets into this river and preparing those rock sockets, installing precast piles. 

And within, I don't know, probably like three weeks of being on that project, we were booming down the crane on our barge for weekly maintenance and greasing, and the boom let go. And it literally came flying down from, you know, its normal angle, came down, and, you know, the barge wasn't that big. There was a Conex box, a Soilmec drilling machine, and this crane. So there weren't a lot of places to not be in the line of fire. And I watched the boom come down and kind of watched my life flash before my eyes. 

Luckily, I was like five to 10 feet away from where it came down, but it was a quick introduction to occupational health and safety. That job also had a fatal crane accident probably two months later. The largest crane on that project, which had its own barge, was doing a critical lift, and the rigging let go. And the recoil of that weight in the water had the barge go one way, and then when it came back around, the entire crane, which was on a turret, went into the river. 

The mechanic for the crane was able to get rescued, but the operator was never found. And the thinking is that they tried to get out of the crane when it went down to the bottom of the river, and the current took them out, and they never found him. So, pretty crazy. 

After that project, I was actually able to get into the environmental side of things and transitioned into environmental consulting. 

I was doing a lot of brownfield redevelopment work around New England, a lot of the old mill redevelopments. Then I started working on EPA Superfund. My first one of those was Nyanza out in Ashland, Massachusetts, which was heavily contaminated with mercury and a lot of organic dimethylmercury. And then from there, I went to pretty much every Navy base from Groton, Connecticut, all the way to Canada, helping clean up legacy contamination from the military operations. 

But like a normal geologist, I wanted to get my hands dirty. I had done a lot of writing reports, taking samples, hiring other contractors to do cleanups. And so I wanted to start doing it myself, so I moved to Texas and then Chicago to do that work. And the first spill response I did in Chicago, we were having to transfer a tote of a flammable corrosive, so we're using an air-driven pneumatic pump to pump out one tote into another. So that was a pretty interesting one. 

That was on Level B, just south of Tilden, Texas. I was down there. This was a spill of about 1,000 gallons of glutaraldehyde, and I was digging this on supplied air because glutaraldehyde has respiratory and vision hazards, so full-face respirator there. We'd have to deal with crude oil and gasoline tanker rollovers quite a bit in South Texas, and so we would have to cold tap them. 

This is high-risk, high-risk work. And although I was the operations manager for this company, you know, safety was a big responsibility of mine. You know, we had to go and execute these types of projects on a daily basis, and we had to be methodical with our planning and execution. And you don't have a lot of time in these kind of emergent situations. You know, when you're not working in this field, if you're working in construction or manufacturing, then you have a lot more of an opportunity to plan. 

So, you know, I take the lessons learned from doing these high-risk activities and try to incorporate them and try to kind of teach how valuable planning is and how that time should be utilized for construction companies and manufacturing now. 

[00:07:07] David Tibbetts: Yeah, and, you know, to your point, right? 

These are emergency responses, and everything that we really wanna do in the industry that we're in is all the work up front to plan, to recognize hazards, to train, to execute, to prevent these things from happening. But we'll let this short video clip play, and then you can kind of talk to what was going on here. 

[00:07:35] Miki Alroy: So this is kind of like a Deepwater Horizon on land, right? 

So this well had been drilled, and they were getting it to the... I think they had just completed the fracking portion of it. 

And so they were about to demobilize off the well with the fracking equipment and start building the pump jack so it can start producing oil. And a valve on the Christmas tree, which is a manifold of valves coming off the well in the basement of the well, had let go, and this was blowing uncontrolled for about two days before we were able to plug it. And that thing's blowing wet gas, so a mixture of crude oil, natural gas, and hydrogen sulfide. And that was blowing hydrogen sulfide at 700 parts per million. So, pretty crazy situation. 

And obviously, responding to that, you get out there and it's hurry up and wait because you wanna make sure that you're doing everything you can to try to mitigate risk now that you have eyes on it and can start planning accordingly. 

The biggest lessons those experiences taught me was we have, as safety professionals, the benefit of time. And if we can plan work, we can do risk assessments, develop process and procedures to manage risk. That's how we're gonna mitigate that risk and prevent injuries. 

[00:08:51] David Tibbetts: Yeah, and I think it's gonna tie nicely into the specific topic that we're gonna get into today. Your journey in particular, I feel like, has prepared you very well for kind of what you're doing now, right? 

And, as I understand it, in 2019, you founded Commonwealth Risk Management Group. 

You know, you've been out in the field, you've been involved in construction safety, you've been involved in emergency response, hazmat cleanup of Superfund sites, and I think that all really has positioned you very well to do what you're doing today. 

Can you talk about what it is that Commonwealth Risk Management Group is and does, and what you're trying to deliver for the clients that you work with? 

[00:09:32] Miki Alroy: You know, I founded Commonwealth Risk Management Group two months before COVID hit. 

And luckily for me, I'd done some avian flu outbreaks out in the Midwest, and so dealing with biological hazards and communicable diseases is something that I had done before and was second nature. Helping companies write plans, to perform decon, have PPE, have proper hygiene practices, that's stuff you do every day on the hazmat side. So I was able to help companies get through that emerging hazard that happened with the pandemic. 

But then I was able to position myself to help those companies do other things. And, you know, I'm a little bit different than a lot of these other consultants that are out there that are primarily just going out and helping companies make sure that their workers are doing the right thing in the field. 

I help more on kind of the 10,000- or 100,000-foot view, when companies really wanna transform their culture or really want to elevate their safety performance. Looking at an organizational standpoint, how can we develop process and leverage new tools like Highwire to manage risk? 

So I've been doing that and been very fortunate to do it for some of the most advanced technology companies in the world, with some of the premier life science and biopharmaceutical companies, to the cutting edge of the cutting edge of robotics and AI in the Boston area. 

[00:11:05] David Tibbetts: Yeah. 

And one of our recent interactions was at a Greater Boston chapter event where you took us to one of your clients, and it was a really cool meeting. 

And one thing I will say that I took away from that is, you know, there are consultants out there whose primary function is to do what you mentioned, or one of the primary services that they deliver is, "Hey, we're gonna come out to your site periodically. 

We're gonna observe conditions. We're gonna observe behaviors. We might engage with the workforce during that time, and we're gonna produce a report, and we're gonna deliver it to you. 

Here's what we found on this day. Here are some things that you need to correct," and kind of move on about their day. And I'm not suggesting that there's no value in that. There is value. 

But one thing I saw about you when we went out to that client site, Miki, is just how integrated you were, how they interacted with you as if you were their full-time safety professional working directly for that company, building programs, building culture. 

And I thought that was really cool. So, kudos to you for that. 

[00:12:06] Miki Alroy: Thank you. 

It's, you know, it goes to establishing trust, right? And developing the relationships. 

And if you can establish the trust and the relationships... and look, I'm somebody that will go onto construction sites and go talk to that frontline worker and talk to that carpenter, the ironworker, because those are the people that ultimately are gonna make either the poor decisions or the right decisions, use the right tools, follow those JHAs. So you definitely have to get their trust too. 

But, you know, if you don't have the leadership in the organization bought in, then, you know, those guys are gonna feel pressured to just meet deadlines instead of do the right thing when it comes to safe work procedures. 

[00:12:46] David Tibbetts: Yeah, absolutely. 

So let's transition a little bit. You're starting your second term as president of the Greater Boston Chapter. Do I have that right? 

[00:12:54] Miki Alroy: Yes. Very honored to be asked to do that for a second time. 

[00:12:59] David Tibbetts: Yeah. So, congrats on that. 

Tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing with the chapter and why it's important for safety professionals to get involved. 

[00:13:07] Miki Alroy: Yeah, you know, I've been very, very fortunate with my journey with ASSP. And I only got involved with ASSP right when I founded Commonwealth Risk Management Group. And it's been such an incredible experience. 

There are so many people in this safety community that wanna help other people. I think our industry as a whole, the safety profession, is about a culture of care, right? And that extends beyond just keeping people safe from occupational safety and health and preventing injuries. It's also helping people with their careers. 

And I had people mentor me when I first started within the chapter, and I'm just trying to carry on that legacy by living by the mantra of safety professionals, which is continuous quality improvement. So we wanna do our best job to support students that are looking at careers in occupational safety and health. 

We wanna support the emerging professionals that just got into the industry and maybe don't have the right support at the organization they're with right now to be mentored and grow. So we offer those mentor-mentee relationships within our chapter. 

And, you know, ASSP, I think I'll describe it too as it's the best phone-a-friend network you can have. So, you know, they always say that safety professionals are really good at a lot of things, right? But sometimes you need those subject matter experts, and the best place to get in touch with those is through the ASSP network. 

We have experts in every discipline that you can imagine, and all you need to do is be a part of that network and you can tap into those experts. 

[00:14:45] David Tibbetts: You know, one of my mentors always used to say, "Sharing is caring," right? And we do that across this profession, right? If you have a question, if you're trying to develop a program, if you're trying to learn about an emerging risk, pick up the phone, call a friend. You're gonna find somebody who's ready to share what's worked for them, right? 

What challenges they've faced, how they've helped to convince their leadership that it's time for us to address this risk in a different way. 

All of those types of things are accessible to you through the network that you create and the peers that you work with. And ASSP is a really great example of a network like that. So thank you for all you're doing with the chapter. 

I would encourage folks to get involved in the Greater Boston chapter if you're local here, and in your chapter if you haven't got involved in where you live, in your region today. I was lucky enough to be in the audience for your presentation in Anaheim at ASSP. Hot Cells, High Stakes. It was one of the better attended sessions that I went to. You probably had a few hundred people in the audience, I would guess, which speaks to the fact that this is a topic that's not only important to you, but important to others. 

So let's start to talk a bit about lithium-ion batteries, the hazards that they present, what you've learned over the years, and why it is such an important topic today. 

[00:16:05] Miki Alroy: You know, lithium-ion battery technology is an incredible technology, and it powers so many of the tools and pieces of equipment that we have throughout our industries as a whole. 

But it's also one of those technologies where the cart got out a little bit in front of the horse when it comes to controlling lithium batteries when they have thermal events or when they go into thermal runaway. 

These emerging risks are things that I really love addressing because it's constant learning for me as a professional, and I love to keep on my toes with learning new things. And, you know, when I was working in the robotics side of things, we're... we have a lot of batteries that we bring into our institute. And we're constantly pushing the boundaries of AI and robotics. 

So we know we're pushing our hardware to the maximum extent, so we wanna make sure that we're minimizing risk when we're doing that. And so we established a whole program to make sure we're keeping high-risk batteries out of our institute and making sure we're minimizing risk out of the gate. But, you know, it was funny, a few months ago, Matt Chase, he's the safety director at Tocci Construction, had tagged me in a video on LinkedIn that had a residential construction worker demonstrate something that wasn't very safe that I wouldn't recommend. 

And he ended up putting a nail through a tool battery and causing a short circuit in that battery and putting it into thermal runaway. And really not focused as much on the unsafe behavior and thing that he did, but I was more focused on the fact that he was completely unaware that those batteries could go into thermal runaway. And it started smoking on him. He was very lucky it didn't explode and catch fire because that is a possibility with these batteries. 

Even, you know, as small as your phone battery, if those batteries are mishandled or not charged properly, they can go into thermal runaway and catastrophic consequences as a result. Lithium batteries, because of the nature of thermal runaway, because they off-gas carbon monoxide, which is a flammable gas at pressure, they literally have flames shooting out of them when they catch fire. And so, as a result, lithium battery fires cause three times the amount of damage than a normal combustible material fire would cause. So that worker in that video, luckily he wasn't hurt. The battery didn't explode. But if it did, that could've been life-changing for that. So he was very, very fortunate there. 

But it just shows it's a knowledge gap, not just for workers, but I think for companies. Companies are just recognizing, as you're seeing all these lithium battery fires happening on the news, that it's a big problem that they need to get ahead of. 

[00:18:54] David Tibbetts: Yeah, I think that particular video, and anyone can find it if you spend a few minutes searching for it, is a really good video that you could use just for including in your training to kind of raise awareness of what could happen. It does demonstrate a lack of understanding of what the risks are, what the hazards are, and what to do in the event that a battery does go into thermal runaway. So those are some of the things that we'll talk about. 

Could you simply describe what thermal runaway is, or maybe what some of the reasons that a battery might go into thermal runaway are for folks that are listening? 

[00:19:28] Miki Alroy: Absolutely. So thermal runaway is an uncontrolled reaction where you have one cell in a lithium battery. And the way lithium batteries are constructed, your phone has one cell in it, but when you get bigger batteries, it's actually a bunch of cells manifolded together. So thermal runaway is when one of those cells heats up, catches fire, starts off-gassing, and it propagates to those others. So it's an uncontrolled reaction that gets worse by one cell causing another cell to go, causing another cell to go, and then you have catastrophic failure. 

And the challenge from an industry perspective, because it really hits every industry. It hits manufacturing. It hits construction. We don't have the normal ABC fire extinguishers. They don't work on lithium battery fires. So we don't have the proper extinguishing technology, typically, at our sites or at our facilities. We don't have properly trained people to deal with those events. We don't have those written into our emergency action plans. So we need to establish procedures, governance, and risk management systems around these batteries, and we need to do it quickly because these batteries are just gonna go, as they life cycle. 

As you charge them and use them, and charge them and use them, the risk for them going into thermal runaway goes higher. The things that cause thermal runaway: mechanical damage, as we saw in that video, and if you're not charging them properly. Each battery has recommended charging practices that should be provided with the battery itself, where the company says, "Here's our charger that comes with this. Use this charger. Only charge it to 70 or 80. Don't charge overnight," whatever their procedure is. A lot of people are using different charging stations for different batteries. 

They're going to gas stations and buying the chargers at the gas station to charge their phones, and they're not designed for that particular battery and phone. That's a surefire way that you can cause a thermal event, if you're using a battery charger that isn't designed for that specific battery. 

That's a very common cause of a lot of these fires. 

[00:21:49] David Tibbetts: Yeah, and so I think much of our audience lives in the world of construction. Of course, there are other listeners in other industries. But if we just focus on construction a little bit, it's important that people have some practical takeaways here. 

You're gonna see lithium-ion batteries all over construction sites for cordless tools. They're gonna be getting charged in all different locations. They're gonna be getting stored in all different places: job boxes, break areas. They're gonna be charged in all these different places. So cordless power tools, lithium-ion batteries for those. Aerial lifts, forklifts, scissor lifts. I mean, they might be powered by larger lithium-ion batteries. 

If you think of some practical things that construction companies and trade contractors should be thinking about, what are some of the practical things that they should be starting to incorporate into their processes, into their programs, into their training? What are just some practical things that people should start to do and think about today? 

[00:22:59] Miki Alroy: Every emergency action plan for construction sites should incorporate lithium batteries and procedures to deal with those batteries, right? We need to be training our employees on what to do if you have a battery that's overheating. You know, can you get it out of the building safely before it actually catches fire? How do we do that? Well, we gotta inspect it. 

So, you know, incorporating inspection into our normal job site inspection that has batteries as a part of that. And maybe it's, you know, getting a FLIR thermal imaging attachment for your phone and looking to see if batteries are overheating. Having dedicated battery charging stations, you know, that are in job boxes that are not flammable. Keeping those battery charging areas away from flammable equipment. Have your battery charging locations almost like a designated hot work area where you're keeping combustible material away from it. 

You know, those are relatively easy things that we can do. And getting the right type of extinguishing technology. There are now available in the United States fire extinguishers for lithium battery fires. We need to be getting those on every construction site because we know the batteries are there. 

Because unless we have those, you know, if we have a battery fire on a site later today and they go to try to put it out with a normal ABC fire extinguisher, it's not gonna go out. 

[00:24:20] David Tibbetts: Yeah, and if you think just about even something as simple as, you know, dropping your power tool and physically damaging the battery, what do we do with that battery after it's damaged, right? 'Cause I think that could be something that's very simply overlooked. I'm gonna go throw it in a job box. I'm gonna go throw it on a shelf. 

Like, what are some things that people should be thinking about from that respect? 

 [00:24:43] Miki Alroy: You know, you're talking about situations that happened. 

You know, I have a client who had one of their laptops have a swollen battery, and one of their supervisors just put it in a desk and forgot about it, right? And it almost burnt the building down. So they do sell containers with extinguishing media that you can put into it. 

That you can take a battery that has been damaged that you think is, you know, potentially gonna go into thermal runaway and have a problem, and you can put it in this container that has the extinguishing media in it, and you can get it outside of the building safely, right? There are those pieces of equipment out there. 

You just have to get the right ones and get enough of them for your job site for the amount of batteries you have. 

[00:25:27] David Tibbetts: Yeah, and I think, I think, um, another important thing to think about that you and I have chatted about before is it's not necessarily just inspecting the batteries that are in use on your site. Inspections really... you should think about them for the full life cycle of the battery, right? 

From the time that they arrive on site to the time that they are put into use, to the time that you have, you know, dedicated storage areas, or areas where batteries that have reached end of life are stored. You've got those storage areas. There's... when we talk about inspections, some people just might think about, "All right. I'm attaching this battery to my tool. I'm gonna do my tool inspection. Let me take a look at it at that point." 

Let's talk a little bit about it from just the topic of, like, the batteries that power, you know, laptops and portable power tools and maybe scissor lifts. There are also cases where, at a construction site, we're building a dedicated room where we're gonna have a whole bunch of these large batteries for a UPS, for example. Starting at procurement, when you're ordering these batteries, to the time that they are delivered on site. 

Talk about just the full life cycle of some of these batteries, and maybe we think about this through the lens of, you know, that finished product, that data center, that semiconductor manufacturing facility that has a large amount of these large batteries for uninterruptible power services, for example. 

 [00:27:05] Miki Alroy: We wanna look at the entire battery ecosystem, right? We wanna look top to bottom. We don't wanna just consider batteries in phones, in laptops, and cordless tools because we have them in all sorts of other pieces of equipment. So you wanna make sure, when you're purchasing, you can go and purchase batteries that are not made well. You wanna make sure you're... just like anything, if you're gonna go buy a new vehicle, right? You're gonna go online and check to make sure that vehicle has a good safety rating. 

Well, batteries get safety rated too. 

There are third-party certifications that battery manufacturers can put their batteries through that demonstrate that these batteries have been safety tested and that meet a certain set of safety criteria. And they make... you know, Underwriter Laboratories is probably the most well-known in the United States third-party testing certification company that does those kind of tests, and they have them for phones. 

They have them for portable tools. They have them for UPS systems. So you wanna make sure that they've gone through those third-party testing. There are also different chemistries to batteries. Depending upon the battery use, you wanna make sure that you're using the best battery chemistry for the application you have. Certain chemistries may perform well because they have high energy density, but they also may not be as thermally stable, right? So you wanna investigate that as well because there are other choices out there. 

There's also different states of batteries. There's liquid electrolyte. There is the gel electrolyte. And they're now looking at solid-state batteries. Lithium titanate is a new chemistry that they're looking at. It doesn't have as much energy density but is much more thermally stable. There's also other chemistries outside of lithium, like sodium, that they're looking at that may offer some better thermal stability while still having that energy density. 

[00:29:06] David Tibbetts: That's great. 

And, you know, one thing I was thinking in advance of our conversation today is sort of making the link between quality and safety here, and kind of taking it a step forward to say, when you think about inspecting equipment or materials when they arrive on site, one of the things that companies should do is, whenever materials or equipment are delivered to the site, do an inspection right then. Was the right equipment delivered? Is it in good condition? To make sure that we don't go and install the wrong material, it's not according to spec, we go and install it, or we don't install equipment that is damaged such that we have to go back and do rework and replace that equipment. Because we know that when we introduce rework, we introduce additional safety hazards. Conditions have changed. Now we're introducing schedule pressure and cost pressure. And if we don't manage that change and manage that risk, we have the potential to put people in harm's way. 

Similarly, if you're gonna be putting in essentially a battery farm for UPS, and those batteries get delivered to the site, how important is it that people understand how to inspect those batteries, make sure the right batteries got delivered, make sure that they didn't get damaged in transport, make sure that we're not installing damaged batteries such that it increases our risk of a bad event, right? 

[00:30:34] Miki Alroy: And, you know, perfect example. Manufacturing defects could also cause thermal runaway. The first time I gave this presentation, the very next day there was an article on the national news that Jeep had recalled 300,000 EV batteries because they had a manufacturing defect. And they basically told people, "Don't park these near your house because they could catch fire." We've had some incidents already. But they had no solution, right? 

So at the very least, we can do the due diligence on the front end, and we can inspect the equipment when it comes in. Because the last thing you wanna do is, if you have a battery that's already damaged for a UPS system and you're gonna go install that, now you're setting yourself up to have a problem. And I can tell you right now that UPS batteries are not small, right? 

When you get to a certain battery size, there's not very many good extinguishing technologies for that. And at that point, you're looking to more contain the fire rather than put it out. And that's one of the biggest challenges they're having with some of these, what they call BESS systems, battery energy storage systems. Is that you're putting a lot of big batteries right next to each other. There have been incidents. 

I remember we had an ASSP meeting with the NFPA back in October, and they were talking about an incident out in the Southwest where a battery storage facility caught fire and two firefighters got badly injured. The fire actually got put out by the extinguishing system that was built within the storage system. However, the flammable gases were still there. 

And when these firefighters went and opened up the enclosure of the battery, the carbon monoxide, that flammable gas, mixed to the right percentage, hit that lower explosive limit with oxygen, and there was still enough heat from that original fire to cause an ignition. And both of those firefighters got injured pretty seriously because of that explosion. 

So we have to think about incorporating safety by design when we are looking at these systems. It's very important. Can we build a fire-rated enclosure that is separate from our facility or separate from the occupied spaces so that, if there is an issue, it's contained in one certain area? The same thing goes for EV battery chargers. Why are we installing EV battery chargers right next to the building? 

Now they're increasing the risk because if one of those EVs catches fire and it's right next to the building, it's a problem. So you're now starting to see companies that are building new facilities putting the EV chargers kind of away from the buildings now. But think about these underground garages that are being built and having an EV fire in there. It's a big problem. 

[00:33:30] David Tibbetts: Yeah. So you hit on a really important point, which is safety in design. 

I think you hit on something else that was really important there, which is, you know, when we talk about emergency response procedures, in some cases we're talking about, "All right, what do we do if there is an event on our site?" How are our internal employees trained to respond? Do we need to evacuate in certain circumstances versus can we respond? And what are the cases where we could make that situation safe on our own? But you also just mentioned a case where two firefighters were badly injured during response. 

Talk a little bit about the importance of engaging with local emergency response services so that they understand what they're walking into, where these batteries are stored, what some of the specific hazards are, what automatic suppression is in place, some of those things, right? 

Because I think that's an important aspect of emergency planning as well. 

[00:34:27] Miki Alroy: There's no federal standards that say you need to engage local fire departments. You know, they have that for hazardous chemicals, right? You have your Tier II reporting that you need to do with your local emergency planning commissions if you have a certain amount of chemicals or oil at your facility. They don't have that regulation in place for batteries. A lot of the governance from a state, federal, and municipal standpoint is trying to catch up now. 

But look, when it comes to life safety, there's nothing wrong with having conversations with your local fire departments because they're the ones that are gonna come to the rescue when things really get out of control and you can't manage it as an organization on your own. So it makes sense to engage with your local fire departments when you have risks that could get to a point where you can't manage them on your own. And I think that organizations need to be realistic about what they can and can't do. And look, what's the first thing that you're taught when you're doing portable fire extinguisher training? Can I, as the person that's evaluating whether I can put out this fire, evacuate safely? Because a battery can burn. A building can burn. You can always rebuild that building. You can't bring somebody back to life if they lose their life from a battery fire. 

So we always have to think about people first. We need to consider, based upon what we have, do we have the proper equipment to put this out? If we don't, how do we now get that? We need to start doing, or just start doing, risk assessments looking at what we have for batteries across our organizations. Do we have the right equipment in place? If not, can we get it? Can we establish training programs? If the risks are more than we can deal with on our own, do we need to engage those local fire departments to let them know? And I'm sure that they would be appreciative. 

There was a massive battery fire out just south of San Francisco that was catastrophic. Catastrophic. You're gonna see more of these battery fires happening the more these batteries life cycle. 

[00:36:38] David Tibbetts: I think that's all really insightful. I think a lot of the theme of what we've been talking about today is this is a risk that's increasing because of the increased presence of these batteries, which is a great technology, and it's a helpful technology. 

But the theme of what we've been talking about is let's get out in front of this hazard, right? Let's start to plan. Let's start to train. Let's make sure we're inspecting. Let's make sure we're thinking about storage, charging, and all of those things. If you think about the phases of a construction project, there are different phases where the risks are different, right? 

If we're just in core and shell, there's not a lot of flammable and combustible materials in the building. The risk might be slightly less. But as the project progresses, there's more combustibles, more flammables, and the risk increases. And so I think, just to bring it back to something as simple as, where are we storing these batteries? Where are we charging these batteries? Are we using the right charger that's compatible with the battery? And thinking about that is something that is a really practical takeaway from a construction application. 

[00:37:55] Miki Alroy: You know, we're not talking about rocket science here. It's just thinking about what are the best management practices for using batteries. And information is out there. Evaluating the risks that we have and making sure we're minimizing that risk using practical methods that you just talked about, right? Making sure we understand what batteries we have. Are we charging them properly? Where are we charging them? Can we charge them in a better place? Are we inspecting them? 

All of those things. Can we get proper extinguishing technology on site? The proper fire extinguishers? All of those are relatively simple things to do. We just gotta make the time as organizations to get that done and just incorporate that into our normal daily life. If we do that, we are gonna do a really good job of starting to mitigate that risk. 

[00:38:44] David Tibbetts: Yeah, if you think about it, it's no different than any other risk that we think about in safety, and it all starts with that sort of risk assessment, right? 

Where is this risk present in our activities? What hazards are presented? And what are some things that we're gonna do to manage and mitigate that risk from a training perspective, a planning perspective, an emergency response perspective? 

So it's really no different than that. And I thought some of the... you know, you did some polling during your presentation at ASSP National, and that was sort of eye-opening as well, right? Just talk a little bit about what the results of that polling were. 

That just kind of speaks to the fact that, hey, there might be a knowledge gap out there, and all of the talks that you're doing and the conversation that we're having today is important to help kind of move the needle in terms of making sure we get ahead of and understand the risks. 

[00:39:35] Miki Alroy: Yeah, well, you know, the first poll that I did informally was how many people flew to Anaheim and how many people had batteries on their person. And, "Hey, have you seen that video of the China Air flight with the overhead baggage compartment on fire? And could you imagine if you were on that plane and what that would be like?" 

But then we asked, "Do you know how many lithium batteries you have with you at the conference right now? Do you know how many batteries you have in your house right now?" 

A lot of people have electric vehicles. All of the gas-powered lawn equipment is now turning to electric, right? You have battery-powered lawnmowers, battery-powered leaf blowers. Those are all in your garage now, and those are all potential risks. Do we have a plan at home? Does your company have a plan? 

It still amazes me, with all the incidents we're hearing on the news, that a lot of companies still haven't gone down the road of either using their own EHS team or reaching out to companies like mine to do that initial, "Let's do an assessment. Let's get an idea of how much we have and start going down that path." It's still amazing to me that not a lot of companies have done that yet. And it's funny because if you look at the poll question that we had of, "Has your company had a battery incident?" a lot of companies have already had incidents, right? 

 [00:41:02] David Tibbetts: I think a third of the folks in the room, and there were about 300 in the room, had said they've experienced a lithium-ion battery fire in their organization. 

[00:41:12] Miki Alroy: And, you know, we say in the industry a lot of times the needle doesn't move until it hits you in the pocket or it hits you in the heart. And we've learned that lesson the hard way too many times. Let's try to get in front of it. We know the risk is there. Let's start doing the work. 

[00:41:27] David Tibbetts: Absolutely. 

So, at the tail end here, Miki, I think we've covered a lot of the keys, but what are some of the key takeaways that you'd like people to walk away with? Some practical steps that they should take that are relatively simple in the short term here? 

[00:41:44] Miki Alroy: At your senior leadership meetings, ask the question, "Do we know what our lithium battery risk is?" And if not, "How do we... let's put a timeline together to start addressing that, and let's take those practical steps." 

Let's get a team together that'll start evaluating it. And you don't have to... we can start small. You can start by doing a pilot at one construction site or one manufacturing facility, right? Scale it from that. So do an assessment. Find out what types of batteries you have at the site. Start looking at our charging practices and storage practices and what we have for equipment. 

And if we can change any of those to mitigate risk, we're doing a good job. 

[00:42:27] David Tibbetts: And what are some simple things that should be communicated via training to the crews that are using these batteries every day? 

[00:42:36] Miki Alroy: Just start inspecting. You know, when you plug your battery into your tool at the beginning of the day, take a look and see if there's any physical damage to it before you plug it in. When you're taking it off the charger, is it really hot? 

Have you ever felt the battery being hot to the touch? If it's really hot to the touch, you don't wanna be using that battery. That battery is showing thermal instability. If it's really hot, you wanna take that out of service, right? Those are simple things that workers can start doing right now, today, that can mitigate risk. 

 [00:43:09] David Tibbetts: Well, thanks, Miki. 

I think every time I hear you talk about this and we speak about it, I certainly learn something new. I think one of the good things about this conversation is really that, hey, there are some relatively simple practical steps that organizations can take to mitigate this risk. But certainly there's a lot more to it. 

There's a lot more that you shared during your presentation around battery chemistry and other hazards beyond thermal runaway because there are certainly other hazards to consider as well. If any folks do wanna connect with you and learn a little bit more about this, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? 

[00:43:48] Miki Alroy: You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. 

There's actually a button on LinkedIn that you can schedule a meeting with me, and I'm happy to informally talk through any questions that people have. I'm here to help. Culture of Care. 

[00:44:01] David Tibbetts: Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Well, appreciate the conversation today. 

Thanks for joining us, Miki, and hope you get out to the saltwater soon and catch a big one, man. 

[00:44:11] Miki Alroy: Appreciate it. 

[00:44:12] David Tibbetts: All right. Take care, everybody.