My Story: Cody Buell

I have always had a passion for helping people. Usually when someone feels that drive, they gravitate toward nonprofits, charities and other similar organizations, but often overlooked are the daily lives of the people around you. Being part of the health and safety world allows me to have a positive impact on local and national communities. I like being able to go home at night and go to sleep knowing that I “did the right thing today.” Making sure the people not only go home to their families, but go home to their families in a condition that allows them to continue to enjoy their lives is a huge concern of mine.

Safety often is thought of as just how to prevent deaths or major injury, but the field goes so much deeper. Safety is ensuring that an individual goes home and can pick up his or her granddaughter or hear his or her son’s name being called as he crosses the stage to grab his high school diploma. Safety is ensuring that people are able to enjoy their lives. … If someone is in constant pain from using the wrong type of lifting technique or, as safety professionals, we don’t identify ways in which to make people’s jobs easier, it is not beyond imagination to postulate that the pain they are in could deeply affect who they are as a person. Safety is so much more than just a major injury. I never have heard someone say, “Well, the reason I got a divorce is because of safety. I was always sore and became cantankerous, so my wife left me,” but I know that it easily could be the case. I think that if you do safety right, people often will not understand that you have done anything at all. We never will be thanked for the back injury that didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean an injury was not prevented.

Safety is a passion of mine because it makes a huge difference. I would like to think that an older gentleman is picking up his granddaughter right now and hugging her because of the work of safety.

Cody Buell, CSP, MPA, MPH, ASP
Environmental Manager and Safety Generalist
Dayton, TN