A Sad Farewell, A Happy Future for EHS
Aug 31, 2018

A Sad Farewell

Gary Jones, PIA's long time head of environmental, health, and safety affairs, has departed PIA to write the next chapter of his career. We had a celebratory lunch for Gary on Friday, August 31, 2018 to recount his many accomplishment and exploits. Gary spent 31 years with PIA and the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation. Over the course of that time he became the unquestioned expert of Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) issues relating to the printing and converting industries. The toll of unneeded and overly harsh regulations on the industry would be far greater without Gary's savvy in representing our interest to regulators. He also interceded on behalf of hundreds of companies when they faced large fines from OSHA and for those effort many companies are sincerely grateful. Beyond that, he helped run a successful EHS conference for 10 years, conducted dozens of webinars, was a prolific writer of articles, produced safety and environmental publications and posters, helped found the Sustainable Green Printing Partnership, conducted workshops, and oversaw a robust EHS listserv. When printing companies had a question, Gary was ready with an answer. He worked at a furious pace for a more than three decades. We wish Gary much happiness as he takes a breather and prepares to move on to new endeavors.

A Look to Happy Future for EHS

Environmental, Health, and Safety assistance is one of our core services, and as such we are committed to continuing to provide the same level of quality service that our members expect from Printing Industires of America. We're in the process of looking for a EHS professional to lead those efforts and look forward to introducing you to our pick in the very new future. We aren't about to abandon our role in communicating the industry's position on proposed regulations, monitoring and publicizing important EHS changes such as the recent updates to California's Proposition 65, and being at-the-ready to assist companies with information and advice.

Gary has left us chock full of EHS resources, from publications like the OSHA Primer, to blogs, recorded webinars, and pages and pages of information on our website. One event coming up that Gary will return to participate in is OSHA Ready!, a four hour virtual seminar on September 13 of the key issues associated with meeting OSHA requirements and not unwittingly making your company a target for big fines. In the meantime, if you have a pressing EHS issue that needs addressed, please email us at ehs [at] printing.org and we will be happy to assist you!

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