Links to details available at http://pinboard.in/u:dchas<
/div>
Last
week, the National Research Council convened a =93Safety Summit=94 on
academic laboratory safety. Roughly 40 people attended, including
representatives from academia, industry, and government labs and
agencies. The goal of the summit, says Dorothy Zolandz, director of
NRC=92s Board on Chemical Sciences & Technology, was to help the
board determine what projects it should initiate in the area of
laboratory safety.
The board is currently wrapping up an update to
=93Prudent Practices in the Laboratory,=94 as well as the production of
educational materials for the State Department=92s Chemical Security
Engagement Program (C&EN, Dec. 7, 2009, page
44).
A few themes emerged from the summit, which included
talks by several attendees as well as open discussion, Zolandz says. One
was that several people felt very strongly that safety should be an
explicit part of the hiring and evaluation criteria for faculty. But
others felt that the problem was really a lack of resources for which
faculty shouldn=92t be held responsible. Matthew Clark, director of
university programs at the Department of Homeland Security, commented
that in his experience, issues of safety compliance came down to =93cost,
inertia, and arrogance on the part of the principal investigators,=94
Zolandz says.
-----------------------
VADODARA: Four days after fire broke at KDAC Chem
Private Ltd in Nandesari-GIDC, the cops are yet to arrest its owner and
other two officials. One person had died and seven suffered injuries
when the factory caught fire on Monday morning. The cops have already
arrested C M Jhalani, security manager of KDAC who was in charge of the
safety and security of the factory.
Company
owner Dhansukh Gaur and two other officials, Kamal Chandani and K K
Patel, are still at large. "We are looking for those absconding and they
will be arrested soon. The offence registered against them is of serious
nature and investigations are on to find reasons behind the fire," said
a police official.
-----------------------
(Reuters)
- A professor at a chemistry college in eastern France was fined 8,000
euros and given a suspended jail sentence on Thursday for causing a lab
explosion that killed a colleague and gravely injured a
student.
The accident occurred in 2006 when professor Alain
Louati went out for lunch and an open bottle of highly inflammable
ethylene triggered an explosion that tore through his laboratory in the
city of Mulhouse, near the German border.
The
blast, which blew out windows and ceilings and blackened walls, killed a
professor in a room above the lab and injured a high-school student in
an adjacent room. The young woman suffered severe fractures to the head
and body, was temporarily in a coma and was left
handicapped.
A court in Mulhouse found Louati, 62, guilty of
involuntary homicide and causing injury by negligence and gave him a
suspended 18-month prison sentence.
At his trial in September,
Louati was accused of using substandard rubber tubes and of leaving the
flask of ethylene open. Louati denied responsibility for the blast,
saying he had closed the bottle and someone must have entered the lab
and reopened it.
-----------------------
At least
three train cars jumped the tracks near the Dallas County jail Wednesday
night.
A Union Pacific train car
derailed behind the Lew Sterrett Justice Center at about 7:30 p.m.,
sparking a chain reaction. Fire officials said three cars flipped upside
down behind the jail.
One of
the cars was leaking fluid, but investigators said they do not believe
the chemical is a nonhazardous fertilizer. Hazmat teams have set up a
dam at the site of the derailment to keep as much of the chemical as
possible from leaking in to the Trinity River.
-----------------------
State officials are concerned about the number of
damaged =93nurse=94 tanks on the roads and on private property in
Iowa.
Pottawattamie County Emergency Management coordinator
Jeff Theulen said the topic came up at the Iowa HAZMAT Conference in
Ames in October.
Nurse tanks are used to transport anhydrous ammonia as
a liquid under pressure from the dealer to the field.
Theulen
said there are 26,000 nurse tanks in Iowa.
=93While
a lot of them are inspected or in good shape, some are damaged and still
holding (chemicals),=94 Theulen said, and a damaged tank is accident
waiting to happen.
-----------------------
The
number of meth labs found in Kentucky has reached an all time
high.
Kentucky State Police report there were 111 meth labs
found during the month of October. That's more than ever before. It
brings the yearly total to 919, which breaks another
record.
Hazmat crews have had their work cut out for them in
2010. With more than a month left in the year, the number of meth labs
discovered in Kentucky has already passed last year's record of 741, and
the state is on track to exceed 1000 labs by year's end. "We really
think that it's going to take a community approach to this and working
with our legislators and developing new techniques and new ways for law
enforcement to deal with this particular problem," Kentucky State Police
Lt. David Jude said.
-----------------------
ST. CLAIR TOWNSHIP, Ohio --
Hazardous materials units have been called to a chlorine leak at a
Butler County water treatment facility.
Workers at a Southwest Water District facility were
changing one chlorine cylinder to another Wednesday afternoon when some
of the chemical spilled, said operations manager Norma
Pennock.
The cylinders are shaped
like soup cans and are 6 feet long and 3 feet in diameter, Pennock
said.
No injuries were reported,
Pennock said, and no workers were exposed to gas during the
incident.
-----------------------
