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Chemical Safety Headlines From Google
Monday, November 24, 2014 at 6:48:51 AM
A service of the ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
All article summaries and tags are archived at http://pinboard.in/u:dchas
Table of Contents (14 articles)
TALIBAN BOOBY-TRAP BLEW OFF SCIENTIST'S FINGERS INSIDE UK HIGH-SECURITY LAB IN AFGHANISTAN
Tags: Afghanistan, laboratory, explosion, injury, bomb
PROFESSOR WARNS OF FUTURE CHEMICAL LEAK RISK AT PASMINCO
Tags: Australia, industrial, follow-up, environmental, waste
OFFICIALS CLUELESS ABOUT BURNING CHEMICAL WASTE
Tags: India, industrial, fire, response, illegal, waste
911 NOT CALLED FOR AN HOUR IN FATAL CHEMICAL PLANT INCIDENT
Tags: us_TX, industrial, follow-up, death, thiols
EXPLOSIONS: BUSINESSES TO RETURN TO MISSION ROCK ROAD MUST BE PREPARED
Tags: us_CA, public, follow-up, environmental, ag_chems, toxics, waste
THREE KILLED IN SARAWAK MINE EXPLOSION
Tags: Malaysia, industrial, explosion, death, natural_gas
VOLUNTEERS TRACK HAZARDOUS MATERIALS ON I-19
Tags: us_AZ, transportation, discovery, environmental
HOUSEHOLD CHEMICAL SENDS 3 SHERIFF'S DEPUTIES TO HOSPITAL IN PALMDALE
Tags: us_CA, laboratory, release, injury, drugs
HAZMAT TEAM REPAIRS WAIKIKI HOTEL CHEMICAL LEAK
Tags: us_HI, public, release, injury, chlorine
JCC-BRUTON FIRE DEPT. EXTINGUISHES CHEMICAL FIRE AT TOANO MANUFACTURER
Tags: us_VA, industrial, fire, response, metals
STUDY ON SAFETY CAPACITY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRIAL PARK IN OPERATION STAGE
Tags: china, industrial, discovery, response
HASH-OIL OPERATION SUSPECTED IN FATAL SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY EXPLOSION
Tags: us_CA, public, explosion, death, butane, drugs, illegal
LARGE-SCALE CLANDESTINE DRUG LABORATORY UNCOVERED ON SYDNEY'S NORTHERN BEACHES - DRUG SQUAD
Tags: Australia, public, explosion, response, meth_lab
JUDGE SAYS HARRAN COMPLYING WITH PROSECUTION AGREEMENT IN #SHERISANGJI CASE
Tags: us_CA, laboratory, follow-up, death, illegal
---------------------------------------------
TALIBAN BOOBY-TRAP BLEW OFF SCIENTIST'S FINGERS INSIDE UK HIGH-SECURITY LAB IN AFGHANISTAN
Tags: Afghanistan, laboratory, explosion, injury, bomb
A British scientist suffered serious hand and face injuries when a Taliban booby-trap bomb exploded inside a top-security laboratory in Afghanistan.
Military police are investigating why the device wasn‰??t detected by stringent security checks it should have gone through before it was given to the expert to examine.
The scientist, having been assured the device was safe, was not wearing protective equipment. But it blew up in his hand.
---------------------------------------------
PROFESSOR WARNS OF FUTURE CHEMICAL LEAK RISK AT PASMINCO
Tags: Australia, industrial, follow-up, environmental, waste
UNIVERSITY of Newcastle chemical engineer John Lucas believes there is a risk the containment cell on the former Pasminco smelter site could leak in years to come.
More than 1.9million cubic metres of toxic waste will be locked in the site‰??s containment cell by the time it is sealed next year.
Planning documents show the cell will be constructed with low permeability materials to minimise the interaction of surface water and the contaminated materials.
But Associate Professor Lucas said history had shown some containment cells had leaked because their surrounding barrier had broken down over time.
‰??‰??A lot of people think they are concrete-lined but they aren‰??t because of the cost,‰??‰?? he said. ‰??‰??The only concrete-lined containment cell that I know of is at Chernobyl.‰??‰??
Professor Lucas, who has consulted on major land decontamination projects around Australia, said there was evidence that the containment cell installed at Sydney Olympic Park 15 years ago was starting to leak.
---------------------------------------------
OFFICIALS CLUELESS ABOUT BURNING CHEMICAL WASTE
Tags: India, industrial, fire, response, illegal, waste
HYDERABAD: A day after hundreds of residents of HMT Colony were left choking and spluttering after unidentified miscreants secretly burnt 20 gunny sacks of chemical waste generated from one of the industries in the area, officials began probe into the incident.
The pollution control board (PCB) has taken up the task of identifying damage caused by the burning of chemical waste in public. Officials from the pollution control board and the municipality have collected samples from the spot for examination.
"We have collected samples from the gunny sacks and sent them for tests. Burning of chemical waste in public was a criminal act. We are also examining the impact it caused on locals," said Dr W G Prasanna Kumar, a social scientist with the pollution control board. The PCB officials said it would take two to three days to identify the chemicals. "Going by the contents of the gunny sacks we can identify the chemicals and industries involved in the waste burning," Kumar added. Though there were a number of industries in the area, scientists said that the chemical could be one used for collecting fingerprints. Ironically, even after dousing flames, officials on Sunday resorted to covering up the remnants of the chemical waste with soil, instead of disposing them properly.
---------------------------------------------
911 NOT CALLED FOR AN HOUR IN FATAL CHEMICAL PLANT INCIDENT
Tags: us_TX, industrial, follow-up, death, thiols
Four workers killed by poisonous gas during a recent Texas chemical leak were trapped inside the pesticide plant for an hour before 911 was called, and no one told dispatchers what substances were inside.
The DuPont plant in La Porte typically housed as much as 250 tons of highly flammable methyl mercaptan.
But it also contained at least some methyl isocyanate. That's the same chemical that escaped a Bhopal, India, pesticide plant in 1984, killing more than 2,200 people in the world's worst industrial accident.
---------------------------------------------
EXPLOSIONS: BUSINESSES TO RETURN TO MISSION ROCK ROAD MUST BE PREPARED
Tags: us_CA, public, follow-up, environmental, ag_chems, toxics, waste
The clock was ticking Saturday for more than two-dozen businesses and about six families who were told at a multi-agency community meeting Saturday that at 4 p.m. they could return to the area they had been evacuated from since a chemical explosion Tuesday.
‰??It‰??s been a pretty rough week,‰?? Ventura County Fire Captain Mike Lindbery told the crowd that included Santa Paula Mayor Rick Cook.
But there was a caveat for those told they could return: they must be prepared to again evacuate if necessary during the cleanup effort for the still undetermined, unstable and unpredictable chemical that exploded early Tuesday morning, causing almost 50 people ‰?? including three Santa Paula Firefighters ‰?? to be treated for symptoms of exposure to toxins.
Held at the Santa Paula Community Century the meeting drew about 70 business owners, residents and interested community members who heard from county fire, law enforcement and environmental health personnel as well as a representative of the US Environmental Protection Agency about the situation in the area surrounding Santa Clara Waste Water, owned by Green Compass Co.
Farmers who had been downwind of the explosion, which occurred November 18 at 345 a.m., were advised by Korinne Bell, deputy agricultural commissioner, not to harvest new crops and limit worker access to the fields until soil sample results are determined.
---------------------------------------------
THREE KILLED IN SARAWAK MINE EXPLOSION
Tags: Malaysia, industrial, explosion, death, natural_gas
KUCHING: A gas explosion in a coal mine in Selantik, Pantu, Sri Aman, about 130km here, killed three foreign workers and injured 24 others.
The dead were a North Korean, an Indonesian and a Myanmar national. Details of their identities were not revealed.
Sri Aman police chief DSP Mat Jusoh Mohamad said the gas fire ignited at about 450m below the tunnel‰??s entrance at 8.45am yesterday.
‰??Twenty-four of the 27 workers inside the tunnel scrambled out and helped those who were injured,‰?? he said.
---------------------------------------------
VOLUNTEERS TRACK HAZARDOUS MATERIALS ON I-19
Tags: us_AZ, transportation, discovery, environmental
Clusters of neon-vested volunteers with pencils and paper were out on the Duval Mine Road overpass last week helping keep the community safer.
Seventeen people signed up to assist with a two-day hazardous materials commodity flow study involving counting cars along Interstate 19. More specifically, semi-tractor/trailer trucks with placards denoting various poisonous, toxic, caustic, explosive, flammable and other dangerous chemicals.
Additional volunteers helped along other major routes, including State Routes 77, 85 and Interstate 10.
Pima County emergency officials want to know what and how many chemicals move through the area, and are using information collected during the road survey as a good indicator. The concern: Chemicals let loose during a malfunction or crash could harm the environment, residents and other travelers
---------------------------------------------
HOUSEHOLD CHEMICAL SENDS 3 SHERIFF'S DEPUTIES TO HOSPITAL IN PALMDALE
Tags: us_CA, laboratory, release, injury, drugs
Four people, including three Los Angeles County sheriff‰??s deputies, were hospitalized Saturday night after being sickened by a chemical at a home on the outskirts of Palmdale, officials said.
The deputies were responding to a domestic violence call about 9:40 p.m. when they encountered a chemical fumes at the home on the 36400 block of Sierra Highway, officials with the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.
This story originally reported the home was a drug lab, which was being reported by county fire officials. There were medical marijuana plants, but they were allegedly being grown for medical needs.
The chemicals, originally thought to be part of the drug lab operations, were simply household fumes.
One of the three deputies was still being evaluated at the hospital, a fire official said. A fourth person, a female resident of the home, was also being treated at the hospital.
---------------------------------------------
HAZMAT TEAM REPAIRS WAIKIKI HOTEL CHEMICAL LEAK
Tags: us_HI, public, release, injury, chlorine
On Friday morning, a hazmat team from the Honolulu Fire Dept. closed off a leak in the chlorine system in the basement of the Sheraton Waikiki that was emitting fumes.
As a precaution, the surrounding area of Lewers Street and Kalia Road was cordoned off.
The report was made around 8:40 a.m. Friday. The leak was due to a faulty swimming pool pump hose. The hotel reports that the hose has been replaced and the leak contained.
Three employees later complained of nausea and irritation to their respiratory system. They were evaluated by Emergency Medical Services personnel and refused treatment. No other injuries or illnesses were reported.
---------------------------------------------
JCC-BRUTON FIRE DEPT. EXTINGUISHES CHEMICAL FIRE AT TOANO MANUFACTURER
Tags: us_VA, industrial, fire, response, metals
TOANO ‰?? A small chemical fire at Greystone Manufacturing was contained in about ten minutes by the James City-Bruton Volunteer Fire Department on Friday afternoon.
According to fire department spokesman Bill Apperson, the fire involved a small spill of a chemical called "enprep," which is used in the industrial treatment of metal. However, he said, the exact cause of the fire is still under investigation.
It was reported at approximately 1 p.m. No injuries were reported, Apperson said, and the building did not sustain any damage.
He noted that because the chemical is very hazardous, the firefighters had to use special gear and go through a decontamination process before leaving the facility.
"It's something that requires a great deal of caution," Apperson said, "so that's why we were super, super careful."
---------------------------------------------
STUDY ON SAFETY CAPACITY OF CHEMICAL INDUSTRIAL PARK IN OPERATION STAGE
Tags: china, industrial, discovery, response
It's important for the safety planning of the chemical industrial park to calculate the safety capacity of the park as chemical industrial parks developed fast in recent decades in our country. This paper defined the safety capacity of chemical industrial park and improved the calculation methods which had been presented. The safety capacity of chemical industrial park could be calculated by using the indictors of the safety capacity (individual risk, social risk and potential risk), in the basic information of the park, such as the production scale of enterprises in the park, layout and the population distribution and so on. The new method presented the concepts of hazardous chemicals equivalent to research the impact of the hazardous chemicals species to the safety capacity. The effect of population distribution will also be considered when calculating the safety capacity. Besides, the domino effect should be discussed to fix the safety capacity of the chemical industrial !
park when the park is at full load condition. Then, the real safety capacity of the park could be calculated. Finally, the analysis process of the appropriate safety capacity is illustrated with an application example in a certain chemical industrial park.
---------------------------------------------
HASH-OIL OPERATION SUSPECTED IN FATAL SAN BERNARDINO COUNTY EXPLOSION
Tags: us_CA, public, explosion, death, butane, drugs, illegal
Authorities who say they found significant amounts of marijuana and butane in the debris of a blown-up home believe a hash-oil operation may have caused a massive explosion that killed a man and injured two others.
Those inside the makeshift home may have been producing "butane honey oil" when it exploded, said Cindy Bachman, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
Firefighters sifting through the ruins found the man's remains in what appeared to be a basement, she said.
The explosion occurred at 6 p.m. Wednesday in a home located in the rear of a property in the 3000 block of Gray Street in Muscoy.
---------------------------------------------
LARGE-SCALE CLANDESTINE DRUG LABORATORY UNCOVERED ON SYDNEY'S NORTHERN BEACHES - DRUG SQUAD
Tags: Australia, public, explosion, response, meth_lab
Drug Squad detectives are in the process of dismantling a large-scale clandestine drug laboratory that was discovered on Sydney‰??s Northern Beaches.
Police were called to a chemical factory on Prosperity Parade at Warriewood about 12.15pm yesterday (Friday 21 November 2014), following an explosion and subsequent fire inside the building.
The fire was extinguished and officers from Northern Beaches Local Area Command established a crime scene.
During an examination of the crime scene, officers discovered the mezzanine level had been converted into an elaborate clandestine laboratory.
Detectives from the State Crime Command‰??s Drug Squad were alerted and are in the process of dismantling the lab and seizing the chemicals.
So far detectives have located and seized more than 200kg of chemicals believed to be used to manufacture MDMA (ecstasy).
The operation is continuing and due to the size of the set-up police expect the process of dismantling the site to take some time.
---------------------------------------------
JUDGE SAYS HARRAN COMPLYING WITH PROSECUTION AGREEMENT IN #SHERISANGJI CASE
Tags: us_CA, laboratory, follow-up, death, illegal
Attorneys for University of California, Los Angeles, chemistry professor Patrick Harran were in court today for a status check on the chemist‰??s compliance with an agreement with the Los Angeles County district attorney‰??s office. Harran made the deal in June so that the DA‰??s office would eventually drop charges of four felony violations of the state labor code stemming from a 2008 fire in his lab that led to the death of research assistant Sheharbano (Sheri) Sangji.
Judge George G. Lomeli said in court that he had reviewed reports submitted by the DA‰??s office and determined that Harran is complying with all terms of the agreement. Lomeli set the next status check for May 21, 2015.
In the June deal, Harran agreed to complete community service and pay a $10,000 fine. After five years, if Harran has complied with all terms of the agreement, the DA‰??s office will drop all charges.
After the hearing, Deputy DA Craig W. Hum said that his office receives reports from Harran‰??s attorneys detailing what the chemist has done to comply with the agreement. Investigators for the DA‰??s office then verify the claims in the reports.
---------------------------------------------
Ralph Stuart
secretary**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
Secretary
Division of Chemical Health and Safety
American Chemical Society
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