For many safety professionals, pursuing safety as a career is something that they find somewhere along the way, a path they may not have always envisioned taking, but found that it merits a strong career choice. For others safety finds them, sometimes through unfortunate means. For Joe Atkinson SMS, currently in his 15^th year of SH&E service, it was a workplace injury his mother sustained while he was a child that would set him on the path to becoming a safety professional.

With the influx of business approaching this industry, it’s important to remember the need to keep workers safe. Hazards in the pyrotechnic industry occur in the manufacturing, storing, transporting, displaying, and selling stages.

Stewart Burkhammer, CSP is the 2019 BCSP Lifetime Achievement Award recipient.