Links to details available at http://pinboard.in/u:dchas<
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HUNTINGTON -- Authorities said a Hazmat
team is dealing with a spill near the 1700 block of Harveytown Road in
Harveytown Park's parking lot.
Dispatchers said Sunday night they were dealing with a
mercury spill.
Authorities at the scene said there is about 5-6
ounces of mercury that needed cleaned up.
Officials
with Hazmat were called to dispose of the element and said it may take
about six hours.
-----------------------
PARMA, Idaho - A Parma movie theater was put on
lockdown Saturday night after several people began complaining of a
burning sensation in their eyes.
It
happened around 7:45 p.m. at the Motor Vu drive-in theater. The theater
offered a Trunk-or-Treat event and then played a monster
movie.
An EMS crew was on scene as
part of the festivities and some people walked over to the ambulance,
saying they felt a burning sensation in their eyes.
Many more people followed with a similar complaint and
even the EMS crew was affected.
According
to Parma Fire District Fire Chief James Cook, several fire and EMS crews
were called onto the scene and the theater was locked
down.
"Our idea was to keep
control of the situation," Cook said.
Cook said
it became apparent once they were on scene what the irritant was and
called the lockdown so as not to create a panic.
That
irritant was chloropicrin fumigant, which was used Friday in a field
south of the drive-in. The fumigant is designed to kill bugs in the soil
and is trenched into the soil about 6 to 10 inches. Occasionally,
pockets of the fumigant get released into the air, which is what caused
the reaction in the people at the theater.
-----------------------
The
Hazardous Materials Chemical Assessment Team from Hopkins says paint
products are to blame for the false nerve agent reading that sparked an
investigation in St. Louis Park.
The St. Louis Park Fire
Department was called to Park Village Apartments on Shelard Parkway just
before 10 a.m. Sunday for a chemical smell in a second floor
hallway.
The Hazardous Materials team found several household
substances spilled or spattered in the hallway and determined them not
to be a threat.
However, according to the report, during a check of
the rest of the building, the team received a reading on its monitoring
device indicating the presence of a possible nerve
agent.
Authorities said no residents or responders showed
symptoms consistent with the actual presence of such an agent, but
Hazmat crews weren't taking any chances and began investigating the
cause of the reading.
-----------------------
KOLKATA: After a day of anguish, a couple of research
scholars gathered at the portico of Presidency University's Derozio
Building, a faint glimmer of hope in their eyes. They hoped to recover
at least a few pages of their research work carried out over the last
two years. But the interiors of the organic chemistry laboratory
remained strictly out of bounds. The fire department and PWD officials
have sealed the room.
Some
other rooms, which suffered less damage, were opened. A few research
scholars rushed inside to recover partially charred journals and
documents some of them yet to be published.
"We were
able to partially recover some documents and files of research from the
almirahs," said Dipak Mondal, head of the department, chemistry.
A team of
forensic experts visited the campus on Saturday afternoon and collected
items for analysis. The report will be completed in a month. The amount
of destruction and loss, however, immediately hit the research scholars
and teachers, as many of them went on a recce on the third floor of the
building.
Gandhi
Kar, one of the professors whose laboratory of synthetic organic
chemistry was completely gutted, was still in a state of shock. He
stayed away from the university on Saturday, although he elaborately
detailed the instruments that were lost to the fire.
-----------------------
CHARLESTON, SC (WCSC) - The Charleston County Sheriff's
Office responded to a meth lab near Old Peter Millers Saturday morning
at 4213 Savannah Highway.
Deputies say 39-year-old John Phillips of North
Charleston is in custody after a meth lab was discovered at the Budget
Inn Motel.
-----------------------
A report of smoke and a
chemical odor at Piazza's Fine Foods in Palo Alto on Friday morning
prompted an evacuation of the market and kept it closed for much of the
day.
The fire department
responded to the store on the 3900 block of Middlefield Road at about
6:20 a.m. and determined the smoke was caused by a refrigerant leak in
the mechanical room at the back of the building. A refrigerator
technician quickly stopped the leak, according to the fire
department.
Dennis McClellan, the store
director, said he was the first person to see the smoke and that a
co-worker alerted the fire department.
"I didn't know what it was," McClellan said. "We knew
it was some kind of chemical because we could kind of breathe
it."
McClellan described the
smoke as a "big puff of Freon."
The store
was closed at the time, and the employees were evacuated as a
precaution, he said. No one was injured.
-----------------------
Police closed Keeamoku Street from Kinau Street to
Wilder Avenue form more than two hours Saturday morning while Hazmat
crews searched for the source of a chemical odor in the pool room
at Makiki District Park.
Fire crews were called to the area around 8:30 a.m. to
extinguish a fire that broke out in the pool room.
Officials
determined the fire was caused by a malfunction on a pool pump that
caused it to burnout. During that time they also discovered a chlorine
odor.
-----------------------
Investigations are under way after a "serious incident"
involving the possible release of toxic chemicals at a Dublin
plant.
An emergency containment plan was put in place at the
Arch Chemical plant on Watery Lane in Swords, Co Dublin, shortly after
5pm last night.
Investigations involving the Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), the Health and Safety Authority, the gardai and Dublin
Fire Brigade are now in operation.
Some 13 units of the Dublin
Fire Brigade were dispatched to the scene along with a hazardous
material unit.
ORGANISMS
They were alerted after an anti-fungal material called
copper pyrithione or copper omadine was discharged at the plant after a
boiler overheated.
The powder is considered to be highly toxic. It can be
fatal if inhaled and can also burn the eyes. After a thorough sweep of
the plant it was declared safe by 8.30pm last night.
-----------------------
CHINO - A chemical spill inside a laundry facility in
a yard at the California Institution for Men sent one inmate to the
hospital with chemical burns and caused minor injuries to six
corrections officers.
Two other
inmates were treated at the prison.
About
seven inmates in the facility were medically evaluated and
decontaminated, but did not receive any other injuries, said Lt. Mark
Hargrove, spokesman for CIM.
Hargrove
said an investigation is ongoing, but the spill would likely be
determined an accident.
Inmates,
he said, accidentally dropped a 55-gallon drum containing a liquid
cleaning agent that had been approved for use by the
state.
-----------------------
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The long-term health effects of a
catastrophic chemical accident at Graniteville five years ago will be
studied by University of South Carolina researchers who recently won a
nearly $3 million federal grant for the work.
South
Carolina's study, headed by epidemiologist Erik Svendsen, will look at
whether chlorine exposure is causing people's lungs to age
prematurely.
Previous research by Svendsen found that, in the first
year after the train wreck and chemical leak, the lungs of some people
who breathed chlorine were aging at about four times the rate that they
were before the 2005 accident.
The new, five-year study
will follow up on that research. The $2.9 million grant will fund the
first long-term chlorine health study of its kind, according to
USC.
-----------------------
KOLKATA: A fire raged
through the hallowed corridors of Presidency University's Derozio
Building before dawn on Friday, leaving in its wake gutted laboratories
in the chemistry and biochemistry departments, heaps of ash and rubble
that once documented years of toil by our brightest brains and an
indelible scar on the city's academic face that has symbolized
excellence for 193 years.
There
were no deaths or injuries in the blaze that was detected at 4am by
guards at the gate, thanks to the fact that the building was locked and
there was nobody inside.
The
flames, believed to have been sparked by a short circuit from a
refrigerator in the organic chemistry laboratory on the third floor,
singed all its three sections before leaping up vertically and
destroying three lecture theatres on the fourth floor. As the tandava of
destruction raged above, the heat generated partially damaged the
physical and inorganic laboratories on the second floor.
Instruments and chemicals worth lakhs of rupees were
destroyed along with research material and thesis papers ready for
submission by more than a dozen scholars working on various projects.
But firefighters who doused the blaze said the damage could have been
worse because the laboratories were stocked with combustible
material.The building has been closed down by the KMC.
-----------------------
Firefighters and a hazardous materials team contained
an ammonia leak at a berry plant between Molalla and Canby on Macksburg
Road early Friday afternoon.
About 3,000 pounds of ammonia leaked from an indoor
tank before a hazmat team shut off the valve at Santiam River Inc., a
cold storage berry packing plant.
Molalla Fire District received mutual aid from Canby,
Clackamas and Gresham Fire Districts, including Gresham=92s hazmat team
- one of the few in the area, said Lt. Denise Everhart, spokeswoman
for MFD.
When MFD=92s first engine arrived on the scene shortly
after 12 p.m., firefighters entered the building and immediately felt
burning in their necks and throat, Everhart said.
-----------------------
KU BUILDING EVACUATED
BECAUSE OF POSSIBLE AMMONIA LEAK, http://www.shawneedispatch.com/news/201
0/oct/29/ku-building-evacuated-because-possible-ammonia-lea/
Hazmat
crews are investigating a possible ammonia leak at Kansas University's
Malott Hall. The building was evacuated shortly after the report was
made at about 2:20 p.m.
According to the reporting party, the spill was made
in a classroom in the seven-story building and could be smelled outside
the building.
The physics and chemistry departments are housed at
Malott Hall, 1251 Wescoe Hall Drive.
-----------------------
Hazardous materials crews were unable to find the
source of a strong chemical smell that forced the evacuation of a
114-unit apartment building Friday afternoon, and residents were allowed
to return to their homes, a fire official said.
After air tests failed to turn up anything out of the
ordinary, as many as 90 people who had been evacuated from the Westlake
Village apartment building at 20 Poncetta Drive in Daly City were given
the OK to return by about 4 p.m., said Matt Lucett, spokesman for the
North County Fire Authority.
Apart
from two residents who complained of throat irritation, no one was
injured. Those two residents were examined at the scene and were not
taken to the hospital.
Crews
went to the building around 11:15 a.m. to investigate reports of a
chemical odor, Lucett said. When they arrived, they found a man who
complained of throat irritation.
Firefighters went into the building to investigate but turned
back after getting a "caustic taste in the back of their throats,"
Lucett said.
-----------------------
Firefighters spent most of
the day cleaning up over 600 litres of hydrogen peroxide spilled in
Hamilton this morning after workers at a chemicals factory pierced a
1000-litre drum with a forklift.
About 40 firefighters were
called to the spill at the Ecolab plant in Te Rapa, in northern
Hamilton, just before 10am.
Workers spilled some of the chemical inside the
factory, and while trying to clean up took the rest of it outside which
also had to be dealt with, Fire Service Waikato assistant area manager
Darryl Papesch told NZPA.
Ecolab workers put absorbent material on the chemical,
which started reacting with the hydrogen peroxide. They then called the
Fire Service, which evacuated the area and neutralised the spill with
caustic soda. There were about 20 workers at the site.
-----------------------
AN ACTION
plan is being put together to stop pollution at a popular nature
spot.
Dedridge Burn was badly
affected by chemicals that escaped following the massive fire at nearby
Amcor Flexibles in September.
Environmental experts discovered higher levels of chronium in
the burn following the fire and locals complained of a foul smell and a
film covering the water.
While a
clean-up operation has helped to reduce these problems since the fire,
council bosses have been pressured by people in Dedridge and Bellsquarry
to take action to prevent pollution from another spill.
As a first step, a meeting will be held with
representatives from the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency
(SEPA), Scottish Water, community councils and Brucefield Industrial
Estate.
-----------------------
The
Environment Protection Authority is investigating a toxic chemical spill
in South Australia's mid-north yesterday.
Police
say a farmer saw a man in a white ute emptying a drum on the side of the
track near his farm yesterday.
Country Fire Service workers
have cleared the area successfully.
The chemical is still
unknown and samples will be analysed next week.
-----------------------
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has added a
new LEED materials credit for =93Chemical Avoidance in Building
Materials=94 to its LEED Pilot Credit Library, reports Healthy Building
News.
Together, with an earlier credit for =93PBT Source
Reduction: Dioxins and Halogenated Organic Compounds=94 marks the
beginning of a three-step approach the USGBC is undertaking to address
=93chemicals of concern=94 in building materials, according to the
article.
The new pilot credit =93acknowledges and supports
contemporary and accepted knowledge about specific chemicals of concern
that should be avoided,=94 according to the Pilot Credit documentation,
which can be met by screening interior finish products to avoid the use
of phthalates and halogenated flame retardants.
USGBC
says these chemicals are listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency=92s Existing Chemicals Program, as well as California=92s list of
Chemicals Known to the State to Cause Cancer or Reproductive Toxicity,
which is also known as Proposition 65, reports Healthy Building
News.
-----------------------
AIR-QUALITY SCIENTISTS REPORT AIR PROBLEMS IN THEIR RTP
BUILDING :: WRAL.COM, h
ttp://www.wral.com/news/local/wral_investigates/story/8526966/<
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RESEARCH
TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. =97 Scientists who work at the Environmental
Protection Agency=92s sprawling campus in Research Triangle Park are at
the forefront of research into air quality, but some have become the
test subjects in an air-quality mystery that has left them so sick that
they work outside the building whenever possible.
WRAL
Investigates started asking questions weeks ago about work-related
illnesses at the campus after workers said they felt the agency wasn't
acting aggressively enough to solve the problem. On Thursday, more than
seven years after the complaints first started, the EPA sent out a memo
to its employees, promising change.
Thursday's memo also mentions "visible mold growth." Yet,
facilities manager Alex Montilla downplayed the mold concerns in an
interview with WRAL Investigates last Friday.
Many EPA
employees, who did not want to be identified for fear of losing their
jobs, said they face a stigma because not everyone inside the building
is affected. Some co-workers doubt the illnesses are real, they
said.
Opened in November 2002, the EPA campus was touted as
a state-of-the-art facility. The agency even dedicated a section of its
website to discuss the extreme measures taken to protect the air quality
at the facility. Inside those buildings, however, particularly inside
the B wing, there's trouble in the air.
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