| About This Archive | | DCHAS-L 2016 Index | | DCHAS-L Yearly Index | |
Check out Safety Emporium for your N95, N99, and face shield needs.
|
Previous by Date: Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Sound Cancelling earbuds vs ear plugs Date: Tuesday, May 3, 2016 11:15:51 PM Author: Harry J. Elston <helston**At_Symbol_Here**MIDWESTCHEMSAFETY.COM> |
Next by Date: Subject: Re: [DCHAS-L] Examples of Control banding and Chemical Safety Levels Date: Wed, 4 May 2016 13:28:59 +0000 Author: "Stuart, Ralph" |
Chemical Safety Headlines From Google
Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 7:08:29 AM
A membership benefit of the ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
All article summaries and tags are archived at https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__pinboard.in_u-3Adchas&d=DQIFaQ&c=lb62iw4YL4RFalcE2hQUQealT9-RXrryqt9KZX2qu2s&r=meWM1Buqv4IQ27AlK1OJRjcQl09S1Zta6YXKalY_Io0&m=xgFisK3u_dTDXqkrSzhZ-IHXp7eu_tyRfW9RU6bqCdY&s=E0N9UBVsZ9ZRQVZBF4AhEhkMW7rOfWKqt1sMjqDBwYE&e=
Table of Contents (9 articles)
AMMONIA LEAK EVACUATES WHITE CASTLE MANUFACTURING PLANT
Tags: us_OH, industrial, release, response, ammonia
LEAKING TANK CAR SHUTS DOWN IOWA PARK ROAD
Tags: us_TX, transportation, release, response, other_chemical
OFFICIALS KNEW FIREWORKS AT MOUNT RUSHMORE COULD CAUSE A FIRE. BUT THEY DIDN"T EXPECT THIS.
Tags: us_SD, public, discovery, environmental, fireworks
STUDY LINKS ARSENIC IN NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND WELLS TO BLADDER CANCER
Tags: us_NH, public, release, environmental, other_chemical
JUDGE GIVES TORRANCE EXXONMOBIL REFINERY GO-AHEAD TO RESTART OPERATIONS, REBUFFING ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP"S EFFORTS
Tags: us_CA, industrial, follow-up, environmental, gasoline
AUTHORITIES SEEK DRIVER WHO FLED CHEMICAL SPILL ON 191
Tags: us_TX, transportation, release, response, ag_chems, pesticides
PERSPECTIVES: BACK TO THE FUTURE OF CHEMISTRY
Tags: laboratory, discovery, environmental
ROOF FIRE FORCES EVACUATION OF THE DIODES/FABTECH BUILDING
Tags: us_MO, industrial, fire, response, unknown_chemical
NEIGHBORS REACT TO CHEMICAL LEAK FROM TRAIN DERAILED IN DC
Tags: us_MD, transportation, release, response, ethanol, sodium_hydroxide
---------------------------------------------
AMMONIA LEAK EVACUATES WHITE CASTLE MANUFACTURING PLANT
Tags: us_OH, industrial, release, response, ammonia
VANDALIA (WRGT) - More than 100 employees at the White Castle manufacturing plant in Vandalia had to be evacuated Tuesday morning for an ammonia leak.
Quality Assurance Manager, Whitney Baker said an independent contractor was working on the ammonia system this morning, May 3, when a small leak was detected. Baker said the leak was contained to one room and everyone was evacuated right away.
"There's no food safety risk at this time," Baker told reporters Tuesday afternoon. "Of course we'll evaluate the product before we resume production." Baker said the plant, which is located on Capstone Way in Vandalia does routine alarm drills. She said those routine drills allowed employees to be evacuated quickly and safely.
---------------------------------------------
LEAKING TANK CAR SHUTS DOWN IOWA PARK ROAD
Tags: us_TX, transportation, release, response, other_chemical
The Wichita Falls Fire Department Hazmat team responded to a Burlington Northern train car venting argon gas Tuesday morning in the 1500 block of Old Iowa Park Road.
Railroad officials determined the problem to be a malfunctioning pressure relief valve and sent the train on to its next stop in Amarillo to be repaired.
Small amounts of refrigerated argon gas were venting from the tank car Tuesday morning when it was stopped.
Wichita Falls Police were sent to the scene to block off a portion of Iowa Park Road until it was determined the leaking gas was not posing a threat.
---------------------------------------------
OFFICIALS KNEW FIREWORKS AT MOUNT RUSHMORE COULD CAUSE A FIRE. BUT THEY DIDN"T EXPECT THIS.
Tags: us_SD, public, discovery, environmental, fireworks
Fireworks at Mount Rushmore were probably a bad idea to begin with. In South Dakota"s woodsy Black Hills, the thousands of onlookers who flocked to the display had to use the same entrance, which is also the exit.
What if the pyrotechnics sparked a forest fire? And what if there were some other emergency? Those are two questions that officials at the national memorial site grappled with during the 11 years starting in 1998 that the event was held. But there was at least one other threat, something officials at the national memorial didn"t consider until a U.S. Geological Survey investigation recently uncovered it in the drinking water.
The fireworks were discontinued in 2011 but they left high levels of a chemical called perchlorate in water used by 3 million people who visit the memorial yearly. The Environmental Protection Agency doesn"t regulate the chemical under the Clean Water Act, but Galen Hoogestraat, the lead author of the investigation, said the agency does provide guidelines that say that any presence over 15 parts per billion is a possible health risk.
According to the report issued two weeks ago and announced by USGS on Monday, percholate in the groundwater is many times higher than that. "We"re finding concentrations of over 50 parts per billion," said Hoogestraat, a USGS hydrologist in South Dakota.
---------------------------------------------
STUDY LINKS ARSENIC IN NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND WELLS TO BLADDER CANCER
Tags: us_NH, public, release, environmental, other_chemical
Drinking water from private wells in northern New England may increase the risk of bladder cancer, according to a new study from the National Cancer Institute, Dartmouth and the state health departments in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont.
For the past 50 years, rates of bladder cancer in men and women in northern New England have been about 20 percent higher than those in the rest of the country.
The study finds the high cancer rates correlate with high rates of arsenic in private wells.
The Department of Environmental Services says the study is a reminder that homes on well water should test for arsenic and add filters if the levels exceed the EPA threshold.
---------------------------------------------
JUDGE GIVES TORRANCE EXXONMOBIL REFINERY GO-AHEAD TO RESTART OPERATIONS, REBUFFING ENVIRONMENTAL GROUP"S EFFORTS
Tags: us_CA, industrial, follow-up, environmental, gasoline
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) " A Los Angeles judge Monday rebuffed an effort by an environmental group to delay the planned restart of the ExxonMobil refinery in Torrance that was damaged by an explosion more an a year ago.
Members of the Refinery Safety Network filed a lawsuit in hopes of keeping the refinery offline, despite a vote in support of the move by a South Coast Air Quality Management District hearing board. The group contended that restarting the facility without pollution-control systems in operation would violate state environmental laws.
There"s no word from ExxonMobil on exactly when the company hopes to restart the refinery, which suffered extensive damage in an explosion on Feb. 18, 2015, and has been operating in a limited capacity ever since.
"We agree with the decision of the court," according to an ExxonMobil statement. "We continue to work with the South Coast Air Quality Management District on the approved and stringent safety conditions for restart, so that the Torrance refinery can resume safe and environmentally responsible production of gasoline and other products for California."
Under the re-start agreement approved by the AQMD hearing board, ExxonMobil must pay about $5 million in penalties for air pollution violations that resulted from the February 2015 blast. It must also follow a multi-step procedure aimed at minimizing emissions during the re-start procedure.
---------------------------------------------
AUTHORITIES SEEK DRIVER WHO FLED CHEMICAL SPILL ON 191
Tags: us_TX, transportation, release, response, ag_chems, pesticides
Odessa police sought to identify the driver who fled the scene of a hazardous pesticide spill Friday on Highway 191 after the trailer he was pulling loaded with the chemical came unhooked and turned over.
The spill happened at about 6 p.m. Friday in the 6300 block of Highway 191 as a vehicle pulling the trailer merged from a frontage road, said Cpl. Steve LeSueur, police spokesman. No injuries were reported.
But Odessa police reported investigating the wreck on Monday, while Ector County Environmental Enforcement officers investigated the chemical release.
The chemical that spilled was Bellacide 300, a pesticide also used in the oilfield for work like enhanced oil recovery and hydrotesting pipelines and tanks. The Environmental Protection Agency, which prohibits open pouring of the toxic chemical, describes Bellacide 300 as corrosive and potentially harmful to humans and animals with links to irreversible eye damage.
Emergency responders closed Highway 191 between Billy Hext Road and East Loop 338 for hours Friday while crews cleaned up the spill from the roadway. But the City of Odessa in a Friday news release reported that residents in the area were not in danger.
---------------------------------------------
PERSPECTIVES: BACK TO THE FUTURE OF CHEMISTRY
Tags: laboratory, discovery, environmental
Cures, not treatments. It is our science that invents new medicines and how to make them. In this, chemists are assisted by biologists and medical researchers doing the testing. Perhaps the most general challenge in drug discovery today is to invent new medicines that will cure viral diseases. The threat is enormous: Imagine a world in which AIDS or Ebola could be passed by a mosquito bite, unless we develop medicines to conquer the diseases. But besides antivirals, other critical needs include inventing cures"not just treatments"for cancer, heart disease, diabetes, schizophrenia, arthritis, and genetic defects.
Tapping the power of the sun. We need materials with improved electrical properties, including superconducting wires that operate at or near room temperature, so that we can transfer electricity from its source to its point of use without loss from resistance. Then we could generate electricity from the sun in the desert and send it wherever it is needed. And we could develop better photovoltaic materials to convert the desert sunlight to electricity; there"s plenty of room for better efficiency. Currently, we use the solar power of the past to generate energy when we burn coal and petroleum. But by developing new materials, we can take advantage of solar power beaming down at the present instead and not cause global warming and air pollution.
Systems, not substances. Another challenge for chemistry is to focus more on interacting chemical systems, not just individual substances. As an example, chemists isolated DNA and learned its structure more than 50 years ago. But that does not really tell us how life works or how we could imitate life. Life is a process in which many substances interact in organized systems, and chemistry is in its infancy in understanding these systems. For example, bacteria are quite simple living organisms, but we don"t yet know exactly how to mimic them or build on their functions with our own created, synthetic systems. Chemists will do this one day, and we will build self-reproducing molecular machines that could change our world.
In thinking about how we might achieve these dreams, one realizes that chemists have a general problem. We are creative scientists constantly making new molecules and materials, which means we must also be mindful of their impacts. That is why green and sustainable chemistry will always be in our future. We have to get better at anticipating and avoiding possible side effects or imparting unexpected toxicities to our air and water. This is yet another good reason to be a chemist: We can understand and solve such problems. Many other scientific fields have no such challenge"who has heard of green astronomy or green algebraic topology?
---------------------------------------------
ROOF FIRE FORCES EVACUATION OF THE DIODES/FABTECH BUILDING
Tags: us_MO, industrial, fire, response, unknown_chemical
On Saturday, April 30, 2016, at 8:02 p.m., the Lee"s Summit Fire Department responded to a reported structure fire at Diodes/Fabtech, 777 NW Blue Parkway, in the north building of the Summit Technology Campus. An employee called 911 to report a fire on the roof and smoke in their chemical/gas storage room.
When the fire department arrived, a small fire was visible on the roof of the 540,000 square foot, mixed use facility. The building was in the process of being evacuated.
The fire was located on the roof and in the gas scrubber room, on the north side of the building. The gasses are used for the manufacturing of semi-conductors for the electronics industry and the scrubbers process the gasses after they have been used.
After consulting with facility staff to determine the types of hazardous materials involved, crews made an initial investigation inside of the scrubber room and found a piece of ductwork from a scrubber unit burning in a pipe chase near the deck of the roof. A sprinkler head near the fire had activated and controlled the fire in the chase.
Fire crews finished extinguishing that fire as other crews attacked the fire involving the ductwork on the roof. On the roof, a portion of the ductwork going to an exhaust fan had burned and fallen away leaving burning gasses coming from two scrubber exhaust pipes. Fire crews applied foam and water from the ladder truck to control the fires and protect the exposures around them as the fire department worked with Diodes staff to shut down all of the gasses going into the scrubber.
---------------------------------------------
NEIGHBORS REACT TO CHEMICAL LEAK FROM TRAIN DERAILED IN DC
Tags: us_MD, transportation, release, response, ethanol, sodium_hydroxide
The CSX train was traveling from Cumberland, Md. to Hamlet, N.C. when it derailed 14 rail cars at 6:40 a.m. on May 1, said a spokesperson with CSX. The train had three locomotives and 175 total cars, including 94 loaded cars carrying mixed freight, and 81 empties.
Authorities later confirmed there were three chemical spills due to the derailment. The sodium hydroxide leak from one of the derailed cars was plugged this morning. Clean-up operations will be underway shortly. During more detailed inspections of the cars, another derailed tank car that was leaking non-hazardous calcium chloride solution has also been sealed. Additionally, a derailed ethanol rail car was found to be leaking slowly from the base of a valve. The ethanol is contained and work is ongoing to re-seal the valve, wrote a CSX spokesperson just before 2:30 p.m. Sunday.
The chemical spills forced some to temporarily stay inside, the incident also shut down stores and shops for much of the day. Metro made clear online, this was not their incident.
---------------------------------------------
Previous post | Top of Page | Next post