From: Secretary ACS DCHAS <secretary**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org>
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Chemical Safety headlines (9 articles)
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 07:20:47 -0400
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Table of Contents (9 articles)

FIRE DAMAGES AUTO BODY SHOP
Tags: us_SC, public, explosion, response, other_chemical

CARBON MONOXIDE INCIDENT AT DOUGLAS, MASS. TOWN HALL
Tags: us_MA, education, release, injury, carbon_monoxide

CARBON HAZMAT, UTAH COUNTY BOMB SQUAD TEAM UP FOR HELPER DETONATION
Tags: us_UT, public, discovery, response, explosives

CHEMICAL SPILL PROMPTS EVACUATION AT MSU
Tags: us_MI, laboratory, release, response, other_chemical

CHEMICAL FUMES FORCE EVACUATION AT DEERFIELD BEACH BUSINESS
Tags: us_FL, industrial, release, response, cleaners

WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS BREAKING NEWS AND FIRST WARNING WEATHER WITH WGGB.COM ABC 40
Tags: us_MA, transportation, release, response, pool_chemicals

ANOTHER ACID LEAK AT TESORO REFINERY
Tags: us_CA, industrial, follow-up, injury, sulfuric_acid

REPORT ON ARMY LAB FIRE IN MD. PROPOSES SAFEGUARDS
Tags: us_MD, laboratory, follow-up, injury, epoxy, paints

MANY CHEMICAL SPILL QUESTIONS REMAIN, FIRST WVTAP REPORTS SAY
Tags: us_WV, industrial, follow-up, environmental, other_chemical


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FIRE DAMAGES AUTO BODY SHOP
http://www.carolinalive.com/news/story.aspx?id=1019824#.Uyl9AKhdWE0
Tags: us_SC, public, explosion, response, other_chemical

A fire has caused extensive damage to an auto body shop on South Main Street in Darlington just after 11 o'clock Monday morning.

Darlington City Fire Chief Patrick Cavanaugh said the fire was massive, but crews were able to get it contained and under control without spreading to other buildings.

Darlington police say a mechanic was working on the car. It apparently had a gas leak and that caused a small explosion.

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CARBON MONOXIDE INCIDENT AT DOUGLAS, MASS. TOWN HALL
http://www.necn.com/03/17/14/Carbon-monoxide-incident-at-Douglas-Mass/landing.html?blockID=863943
Tags: us_MA, education, release, injury, carbon_monoxide

Douglas, Mass.) - At 8:15 a.m. Monday, the 77 kindergartners and their teachers at the Douglas, Mass. Early Education Center had arrived for school at the municipal building.

"The students had just gotten into the building when the teachers noticed the odor," said Douglas Fire Chief Kent Vinson.

The classrooms are on the second floor.

"We had an odor of some type of exhaust," said Douglas Police Chief Patrick Foley.

That was the tip-off, then came the sick kids.

"A few of the students reported having a headache. A few were nauseous. But mostly, I think it was just anxiety, too, on some of the students' parts," said Douglas Superintendent Nancy Lane.

Then came the ambulances and EMTs. They took carbon monoxide readings in the building, and found that they were elevated.

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CARBON HAZMAT, UTAH COUNTY BOMB SQUAD TEAM UP FOR HELPER DETONATION
http://www.sunad.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=30677
Tags: us_UT, public, discovery, response, explosives

Carbon County Hazardous Materials Team Officers along with members of the Utah County Bomb Squad safely detonated six blasting caps Monday evening in Helper after being alerted to the explosive material by a woman cleaning out her deceased father's home.
According to Carbon County Emergency Service's Director Director Jason Llewelyn, the HAZMAT team was alerted by Carbon County Dispatch to a half a dozen explosives found in downtown Helper at around 3 p.m.
Llewelyn contacted Helper City Police Chief Trent Anderson, and the officers investigated the home, finding what they thought to be 30-year-old blasting caps, decaying in a small box.
"There was definitely enough material there to be fatal to any number of individuals," said Llewelyn. "Those caps could be described as having the destructive force of one or two sticks of dynamite."
While the Carbon County team is trained and certified to handle explosives, Llewelyn decided to play it safe and called in the bomb squad from Utah County.
"In a situation where there isn't any immediate threat, there's no reason to put our officers in danger," he said. "The bomb squad possess equipment that we just don't have here in Carbon County."

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CHEMICAL SPILL PROMPTS EVACUATION AT MSU
http://www.wlns.com/story/25006167/chemical-spill-prompts-evacuation-at-msu
Tags: us_MI, laboratory, release, response, other_chemical

People have returned to buildings that were briefly evacuated at Michigan State University because of complaints of a strange odor.

Campus police responded to suspicions of a natural gas leak around 9 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

The smell prompted them to evacuate Farral, Erickson, Olds Hall, the Administration building, and the main library. Those buildings were evacuated as a precaution, while fire and safety personnel monitored air quality.

But campus police spokeswoman Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor says the smell came from a bottle that broke inside the Chemistry Building and vented outside through a fume hood.

She says the bottle had a substance that would smell the same as a gas leak. She says the odor is non-hazardous.

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CHEMICAL FUMES FORCE EVACUATION AT DEERFIELD BEACH BUSINESS
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/deerfield/fl-deerfield-warehouse-hazmat-20140318,0,712836.story
Tags: us_FL, industrial, release, response, cleaners

About 85 people were evacuated from a Deerfield Beach business when a machine overheated, sending chemical fumes into the air, according to Broward Sheriff Fire Rescue.

The staff at Aero Precision Repair and Overhaul, 580 S. Military Trail, was forced out of the building around 2 p.m., fire rescue spokesman Mike Jachles said.

"A vapor degreaser machine overheated and it released a chemical vapor," he said. "There was no actual chemical residue, but the alarm went off in the facility as it should [and] they evacuated."

Teams from Broward Sheriff and Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue checked for harmful vapor levels while venting the building for at least two hours, he said.

"They did have some readings, but nothing that was off the charts," Jachles said.

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WESTERN MASSACHUSETTS BREAKING NEWS AND FIRST WARNING WEATHER WITH WGGB.COM ABC 40
http://www.wggb.com/2014/03/18/west-springfield-officials-responding-to-potential-hazmat-situation/
Tags: us_MA, transportation, release, response, pool_chemicals

WEST SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (WGGB) ‰?? West Springfield Police and Fire officials are responding to a ‰??Tier 2‰?3 hazmat situation at 214 Bliss Rd. in West Springfield.
Officials on scene said a truck pulled into the facility and a barrel that was carrying potentially hazardous material spilled over and was emitting a hazardous vapor.

The truck was carrying Sodium hypochlorite 12.5 percent, which is commonly known as super shock for a pool.

They have accessed the chemical and begun the decontamination process. Crews were taking turns entering the area where the spill was confined, trying to identify the chemical that spilled. A decontamination system was set up for the firefighters and their suits, after dealing with the hazmat situation.

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ANOTHER ACID LEAK AT TESORO REFINERY
http://cenblog.org/the-safety-zone/2014/03/another-acid-leak-at-tesoro-refinery/
Tags: us_CA, industrial, follow-up, injury, sulfuric_acid

Less than a month after two workers were injured in an acid leak at a Tesoro refinery in Martinez, Calif., two more workers were burned in another acid leak at the same refinery. The second workers were injured on March 10 when they cut into a sulfuric acid pipe as part of planned maintenance, the Sacramento Bee reported.

‰??The men were initially protected from injury by their protective suits, but some acid remained on the garments and drained onto their necks after the men took decontamination showers,‰?? other workers told SFGate.

The workers injured in the previous leak were not wearing similar protective gear, according to the U.S. Chemical Safety & Hazard Investigation Board (CSB). CSB is investigating the incidents, although in February Tesoro blocked CSB investigators from the site and refused to preserve the first scene.

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REPORT ON ARMY LAB FIRE IN MD. PROPOSES SAFEGUARDS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/report-on-army-lab-fire-in-md-proposes-safeguards/2014/03/17/4746449a-adf6-11e3-b8b3-44b1d1cd4c1f_story.html
Tags: us_MD, laboratory, follow-up, injury, epoxy, paints

REDERICK, Md. ‰?? The Army Corps of Engineers is recommending safeguards after a fire caused $10 million in damage to an unfinished laboratory building at Fort Detrick in Frederick.

The Frederick News-Post (http://bit.ly/1gyur9e">http://bit.ly/1gyur9e ) reported Sunday on a report it obtained through the Freedom of Information Act on last year‰??s fire at the new U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases.

Investigators couldn‰??t determine the cause of the blaze. But they concluded it started in a room where a welder had been working without a required permit or a co-worker watching for fire.

The report recommends a fire watch for all welding operations. It also urges reassessment of an epoxy wall coating cited as the fire‰??s primary fuel source.

The fire pushed the building‰??s completion date back from 2014 to May 2015.

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MANY CHEMICAL SPILL QUESTIONS REMAIN, FIRST WVTAP REPORTS SAY
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/201403170075
Tags: us_WV, industrial, follow-up, environmental, other_chemical

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Two new reports from an independent team confirmed Monday that people can smell extremely low concentrations of Crude MCHM and that significant data gaps exist that cloud what is known about the potential public health impacts of January's Elk River chemical spill.

The reports from the West Virginia Testing Assessment Project, or WVTAP, outlined findings about the odor threshold for Crude MCHM and summarized the limited data about the toxicity of that chemical and others spilled into the Elk River on Jan. 9 by Freedom Industries.

Perhaps the most significant new conclusion is one that humans appear to be able to smell the licorice-like odor of Crude MCHM at far lower levels than state officials had previously believed.

The "odor threshold concentration" for the chemical is estimated to be 0.15 parts per billion, according to one of the two new reports made public by the WVTAP team. Previously, state officials had said they were using an odor threshold number of 1.0 part per billion, which they obtained from work done by the Louisville Water Company in Kentucky.

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