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In this study I revisit the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, in order to gain additional perspective on the relationship between organizational decision making and crisis outcomes. This exercise is an historical “counterfactual” or “what if” excursion, using recently declassified documents and simulated exchange calculations, from which I hope to draw three principal benefits. First, the study may shed some additional light on why Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev was willing to take such a dangerous gamble. Second, our counterfactual crisis suggests that the risk of inadvertent war, so much written about in connection with Cuba, 1962, was less important than the risk of a deliberate, but miscalculated, escalation. Third, the balance of command and control vulnerability might have mattered more to crisis‐ridden US leaders than the balance of strategic nuclear forces. If so, it helps to explain the apparent reluctance of US leaders to employ highly coercive forms of nuclear brinkmanship.

This paper aims to measure exposures to airborne contaminants during three-dimensional (3-D) printing and post-processing tasks in an industrial workplace.

Contaminant concentrations were assessed using real-time particle number (0.007 to 1 µm) and total volatile organic compound (TVOC) monitors and thermal desorption tubes during various tasks at a manufacturing facility using fused deposition modeling (FDM^TM) 3-D printers. Personal exposures were measured for two workers using nanoparticle respiratory deposition samplers for metals and passive badges for specific VOCs.

Opening industrial-scale FDM^TM 3-D printer doors after printing, removing desktop FDM^TM 3-D printer covers during printing, acetone vapor polishing (AVP) and chloroform vapor polishing (CVP) tasks all resulted in transient increases in levels of submicrometer-scale particles and/or organic vapors, a portion of which enter the workers’ breathing zone, resulting in exposure. Personal exposure to quantifiable levels of metals in particles <300 nm were 0.02 mg/m³ for aluminum, chromium, copper, iron and titanium during FDM^TM printing. Personal exposures were 0.38 to 6.47 mg/m³ for acetone during AVP and 0.18 mg/m³ for chloroform during CVP.

Characterization of tasks provided insights on factors that influenced contaminant levels, and in turn exposures to various particles, metals < 300 nm and organic vapors. These concentration and exposure factors data are useful for identifying tasks and work processes to consider for implementation of new or improved control technologies to mitigate exposures in manufacturing facilities using FDM^TM 3-D printers.