Introduction
Interactive Learning Paradigms, Incorporated (ILPI) is a privately held corporation based in Gloucester County, New Jersey and is widely recognized for supplying free web resources related to occupational/environmental health and safety (OHS/EHS). We maintain thousands of web pages related to these and other topics; use the navigation bar at the top of this page to access these materials.
We offer advertising opportunities on many of these pages and also have a consulting network of experts in the fields of OHS/EHS, chemistry, and more. We also have a retail division, Safety Emporium, that sells laboratory and safety supplies such as fire extinguishers, emergency safety stations, laboratory equipment, signage, and more.
Brief Corporate History
ILPI was incorporated in the Commonwealth of Kentucky on June 25, 1998 by Dr. Robert Toreki and Paul J. Restivo, both of whom have extensive experience and expertise in the areas of physical sciences, pedagogy, and environmental health & safety. Our focus at the time was custom e-learning programs, consulting, and creating our highly respected collection of expertly authored web pages related to topics such as Safety Data Sheets and more.
In 2003, we launched our on-line retail division, Safety Emporium, which has sold lab and safety supplies to thousands of satisfied customers in 114 countries (plus Antarctica). Effective August 16, 2007, we moved our operations from Lexington, KY to Blackwood, NJ. Mr. Restivo left ILPI in 2013 to focus on his professional duties as Director of the Center for Environmental Health and Safety at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Carbondale, Illinois.
Our President, Dr. Robert Toreki
Robert Toreki graduated magna cum laude in chemistry with distinction in all subjects from Cornell University. He then earned his Ph.D. degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he developed new olefin metathesis catalysts (among other notable breakthroughs) while working with Dr. Richard R. Schrock, a co-winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. After receiving a highly competitive and prestigious National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship, he then went to Northwestern University where he studied superconductivity as part of an interdisciplinary team that included collaborators at Argonne National Laboratory. In 1993, he went to the University of Kentucky as an assistant professor of chemistry.
At UK, Dr. Toreki was a campus leader in the development of web-based teaching and learning. He served on the University's Web Policy Committee and Academic Computing Subcommittees, designed and set up the Chemistry Department web site in 1994, and was a campus pioneer in web-based quizzing. His teaching repertoire includes electronic homework, virtual reality tours of student laboratories, and hypertextual supplementary course materials. His laboratory research interests are broadly defined in the areas of Inorganic, Organometallic, and Materials chemistries.
Dr. Toreki left UK in June 2000 to work full-time at ILPI and launch our retail division, Safety Emporium. He continues to participate in professional meetings and societies concerned with pedagogy, computers in chemistry, and safety. He is an active member of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and its Division of Chemical Health and Safety (ILPI hosts the DCHAS-L e-mail discussion list archives) and is the co-recipient of the Division's 2015 Tillmanns-Skolnick Award as well as 2021 Howard-Fawcett Award. He is currently involved in an intiative sponsored by the American Chemical Society's Committee on Chemical Safety Safety Advisory Panel, Division of Chemical Health and Safety, and Division of Chemical Information to develop an open architecture for chemical risk assessment and management information designed for use in academic and research environments. He was Secretary of the South Jersey Local Section of the ACS in 2011, Program Chair for 2012, and Chair for 2013.
In his "spare" time Dr. Toreki volunteers at Gloucester County Habitat for Humanity where he has contributed over 6,000 hours of service and helped build 26 homes as well as handicapped ramps for county residents. He serves on the GCHH Construction Committee and has previously served as Volunteer Coordinator and Construction Manager. He continues to teach occasional college courses for fun including "Nobel Prize Case Studies", a special topics course, as well as General, Inorganic, and Organic Chemistry in the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at Rowan University in Glassboro, NJ.
Our Environmental Commitment
100% of our electric energy needs have been fulfilled with solar power since July of 2011, avoiding tens of thousands of pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.
We achieved this goal using an on-site photovoltaic (PV) array rather than taking the easy way out and purchasing "green" power credits produced elsewhere. The picture shown on the left is part of the array that is installed on our roof. This system powers everything from our lights to our computers, and every once in a while we use it to top of our employee's electric cars when they run business errands for us.
Of course, PV arrays don't produce energy at night, so we have to draw power from the grid from time to time. But the power we produce during the day exceeds our consumption and that excess is fed back into the grid during the time of greatest demand. The State of New Jersey's net metering program makes this all possible.
The net effect is that we produce as much (or more) solar electricity than we consume, and we are reducing the need to construct additional fossil fuel power plants and suffer the ecological damage they cause (black lung disease, mountaintop removal, strip mining, heavy metal emissions, smokestack pollutants, greenhouse gas emissions, toxic fly ash disposal etc.)
Our Community Commitment
ILPI believes in giving back to our local community. We focus our efforts on areas in which we can contribute expertise and manpower. To this end, we support our employees with full pay while they participate in Gloucester County Habitat for Humanity's efforts to provide a hand up (not handout) with safe, decent and affordable housing in our local area. Instead of going to work, employees may choose to spend up to one work day each week working with Habitat.
This ongoing commitment means our employees may participate in Habitat builds two mornings a week and on Saturdays. Don't be surprised if you call or email in the morning and find out that most of our staff is on a work site rather than the office. But don't worry, we will always be available to take your calls, emails, questions, and orders no matter where we are!