I wondered about the same thing, Debbie. Maybe the build-up occurred in an exhaust duct?

W.

Wayne Wood | Associate Director, University Safety (EHS), University Services ‰?? Directeur Adjoint, Direction de la pr̀©vention (SSE), Services universitaires | McGill University | 3610 rue McTavish Street, 4th floor | Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 1Y2 | Tel: (514) 398-2391

-----Original Message-----
From: DCHAS-L Discussion List [mailto:dchas-l**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU] On Behalf Of Debbie M. Decker
Sent: Friday, February 06, 2015 11:36 AM
To: DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**MED.CORNELL.EDU
Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Chemical Safety headlines from Google (13 articles)

Did anyone else find this tidbit odd? How could there be methyl mercaptan vapor build up and no one notice it? Around here, someone takes the sealed jar out of the dessicator to take to the fume hood and there's howling up and down the hall from the smell.

Debbie M. Decker, CCHO, ACS Fellow
Chair, Division of Chemical Health and Safety University of California, Davis
(530)754-7964
(530)304-6728
dmdecker**At_Symbol_Here**ucdavis.edu

Birkett's hypothesis: "Any chemical reaction that proceeds smoothly under normal conditions, can proceed violently in the presence of an idiot."

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SAFETY FLAWS LED TO DEADLY DUPONT LEAK
Tags: us_TX, industrial, follow-up, death, other_chemical

HOUSTON -- It was DuPont's third deadly U.S. accident in five years and the deadliest of them all. On November 15th, a chemical leak in LaPorte took the lives of four workers, including two brothers.

They were inside a building that manufactured insecticides.

Federal investigators have now claimed there were problems both with the building and with how things were done there.

"What we are seeing here in this incident in LaPorte is definitely a problem of safety culture in the corporation of DuPont," said Rafael Moure-Eraso, Chairman of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

After months of investigating, the independent agency found a ventilation system had been broken that allowed a harmful chemical called methyl mercaptan to build up without anyone knowing it.

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