Professional Background
Environmental health and safety, industrial hygiene, and forensic and expert work. In the field since 1989, in independent practice since 2005.
The work
The practice is McNeil Safety Consulting, which I have run on my own since roughly 2005. Four kinds of work make up most of it.
Industrial hygiene. Exposure monitoring and assessment — silica, lead, noise, respirable dust, metals, diesel particulate, solvents — together with the ventilation, respiratory protection and hearing conservation programs that the results call for.
Regulatory compliance and defense. Written programs, injury and illness prevention programs, health and safety plans, hazardous materials business plans, and representing employers through Cal/OSHA citations and appeals.
Environmental and emergency work. Stormwater pollution prevention plan preparation and compliance inspection, environmental and property assessment, post-fire indoor environmental assessment, clandestine drug laboratory decontamination planning, and emergency planning.
Forensic and expert work. Counsel retains me in workplace injury and fatality matters — machine guarding and lockout, falls, powered equipment, excavation, multi-employer worksites and exposure cases. That work means site inspection, document review, written findings and testimony.
Sectors
Construction and engineering-procurement-construction, manufacturing, healthcare, film and television production, oil and gas, battery energy storage and utility-scale solar, and mining both above and below ground.
Utility-scale energy
Corporate environmental and EHS work on battery energy storage and solar generation projects in California, Washington, Colorado and New Mexico, on the construction and commissioning side. Neither the employer nor the projects are named. Programs written as an employee belong to that employer, and I will not publish a client list assembled out of other people’s work product.
Where I work
California is home. I also work across the Western states — Montana, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Colorado, North Dakota and South Dakota — on federal qualifications that carry across state lines and twenty-five years of working under other states’ rules.
Writing and peer review
Contributor to the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, and reviewer for the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Michael Karl McNeil 