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From: "Secretary, ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety" <secretary**At_Symbol_Here**DCHAS.ORG>
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Chemical Safety headlines from Google (8 articles)
Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 07:27:01 -0400
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: 0F44969F-F1F7-4A03-8E14-13838B3C457E**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
Chemical Safety Headlines From Google
Wednesday, May 10, 2017 at 7:26:46 AM
A membership benefit 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 (8 articles)
FIREWORKS CACHE EXPLODES IN MEXICO, KILLING AT LEAST 14
Tags: Mexico, public, explosion, death, fireworks
TUNNEL COLLAPSES AT HANFORD; NO RADIATION RELEASED, OFFICIALS SAY
Tags: us_WA, industrial, release, response, radiation
FIREFIGHTERS: UCF POLICE HEADQUARTERS EVACUATED DUE TO CHEMICAL ODOR
Tags: us_FL, public, release, response, hvac_chemicals
BENSALEM HIGH SCHOOL EVACUATED BECAUSE OF FORMALDEHYDE SPILL
Tags: us_PA, laboratory, release, response, formaldehyde
SWEDISH REGULATORS ADVISE ACADEMICS ON REGULATORY RELEVANCE
Tags: Sweden, laboratory, discovery, environmental
CHEMICAL FOUND IN WELLS THAT SUPPLY CHINCOTEAGUE DRINKING WATER
Tags: us_DE, public, discovery, environmental, other_chemical
TRUMP EPA DISMISSES HALF OF SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY GROUP
Tags: public, discovery, environmental
MYSTERY CHEMICAL LEAK SHUTS DOWN WARRENSBURG ROADS
Tags: us_IL, public, release, response, petroleum
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FIREWORKS CACHE EXPLODES IN MEXICO, KILLING AT LEAST 14
Tags: Mexico, public, explosion, death, fireworks
MEXICO CITY ‰?? An errant firecracker landed on a cache of fireworks and touched off a powerful explosion at a home in central Mexico, killing at least 14 people, 11 of them children, authorities said Tuesday.
Puebla state authorities reported that 22 others were injured in Monday night's blast in the town of San Isidro, in Chilchotla municipality.
State officials said the fireworks had been stored inside a home behind a church ahead of a May 15 religious celebration, and the firecracker that set off the explosion came from outside as part of a procession of an image of the local patron saint.
"One of the rockets that are being launched into the air doesn't go up but falls instead, it turns ... and it touches down right there in the room where the pyrotechnic material was," Puebla government secretary Diodoro Carrasco said in an interview with Milenio TV.
"Totally accidental," he added.
The ensuing blast blew out the walls and roof, destroying the home.
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TUNNEL COLLAPSES AT HANFORD; NO RADIATION RELEASED, OFFICIALS SAY
Tags: us_WA, industrial, release, response, radiation
Hundreds of workers were told to take cover at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation after a tunnel full of highly contaminated materials collapsed Tuesday morning. But officials say no radiation was released and no workers were hurt.
Officials say a collapsed patch of ground above the tunnel was larger than first believed. The U.S. Department of Energy said the collapse covered about 400 square feet (37.1 square meters) instead of the 16 square feet (1.4 square meters) first reported.
Hundreds of workers were told to go into a "take cover" position after the tunnel in a plutonium uranium extraction (PUREX) plant collapsed.
The agency says the rail tunnels are made of wood and concrete and are hundreds of feet long, with about eight feet (2.4 meters) of soil covering them. The U.S. Department of Energy says the incident caused the soil above the tunnel to sink between 2 and 4 feet (half to 1.2 meters).
They were originally constructed to hold rail cars that were loaded with contaminated equipment.
Eight rail cars are in the tunnel that collapsed, but it feeds into a longer tunnel that contains 28 loaded rail cars. The tunnel collapsed near where the two tunnels join.
The tunnels were sealed in the mid 1990s, and are checked periodically. During routine surveillance, the agency said it discovered a 20-foot wide hole in the roof of one of the tunnels.
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FIREFIGHTERS: UCF POLICE HEADQUARTERS EVACUATED DUE TO CHEMICAL ODOR
Tags: us_FL, public, release, response, hvac_chemicals
ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - The University of Central Florida Police Department headquarters were evacuated early Tuesday because of a strange odor in the building, Orange County Fire Rescue said.
OCFR and Seminole County Fire Rescue crews were called shortly before 6:30 a.m. to the building on Libra Drive to assess the situation, officials said.
"We called Fire Rescue and evacuated the building after a chemical smell was discovered in our K-9 area," UCF spokeswoman Courtney Gilmartin said. "It was determined to be leaking refrigerant."
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BENSALEM HIGH SCHOOL EVACUATED BECAUSE OF FORMALDEHYDE SPILL
Tags: us_PA, laboratory, release, response, formaldehyde
BENSALEM ‰?? Bensalem High School on Hulmeville Road was evacuated early Tuesday afternoon because of a formaldehyde spill in a second-floor science laboratory, school district spokeswoman Susan Phy said.
Everyone is safe, she said. A teacher was affected by the chemical and taken to a hospital for treatment as a precaution, according to Bensalem Fire Battalion Chief Rob Sponheimer. He said the woman had a headache but was not burned.
Students near the spill, which occurred at 1:15 p.m., were checked by medical personnel but did not need to be treated, according to a Bensalem police news release.
The school will be certified as safe by an outside agency before reopening Tuesday night, police said. Sponheimer said that while his firefighters contained the chemical and checked the area of the spill with air monitoring equipment, the school district is making sure it is thoroughly cleaned.
By 2 p.m., all students were sent to the football field off Byberry Road, where parents were directed to pick them up, police said.
Numerous fire trucks and the Bucks County Hazardous Response Team were parked in front of the school at about 2:30 p.m. At least five Bensalem police officers were stationed on Hulmeville Road directing traffic. They were there for about two and a half hours, Sponheimer said.
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SWEDISH REGULATORS ADVISE ACADEMICS ON REGULATORY RELEVANCE
Tags: Sweden, laboratory, discovery, environmental
Swedish regulators and academics have developed an action plan to help researchers make their work more relevant to regulatory risk assessment.
The team, with representatives from Stockholm University, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, the Swedish Chemicals Agency (Kemi) and the Swedish Agency for Marine and Water Management, have come up with a ten-point action plan.
"There is a gap between academic research and legislation of chemicals," say the researchers, led by Stockholm University's Marlene Ì?gerstrand. This gap can partly be explained by low regulatory awareness among researchers, they suggest.
The Stockholm University researchers work in chemical risk assessment. "We are sometimes very frustrated by the problems that we see when academia and chemical regulations try to meet," says Dr Ì?gerstrand. "It is also sad to see that the knowledge that we have in academia is not used in decision making."
Dr Ì?gerstrand encounters academics that are surprised that their work is not used by regulators.
"Many people are not aware of the regulatory processes. They assume that their data is used in risk assessment but, in reality, they don't know if that happens or they don't know what to do to make that happen," she says.
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CHEMICAL FOUND IN WELLS THAT SUPPLY CHINCOTEAGUE DRINKING WATER
Tags: us_DE, public, discovery, environmental, other_chemical
NASA and the town of Chincoteague are monitoring wells that supply drinking water to Chincoteague after chemicals used in firefighting foam were found in water samples taken from wells near a former fire training site at NASA Wallops Flight Facility.
"There is a potential of contaminants in our water supply because of a firefighting agent that they had used for years at Wallops," said Chincoteague Town Manager Jim West at the May 1 Chincoteague Town Council meeting.
Test results show Chincoteague‰??s water is safe to drink, according to information provided by NASA Wallops on May 4.
The tests were done using an independent laboratory.
Initial and follow-up tests of Chincoteague‰??s drinking water found per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances ‰?? but they were at a level below the Environmental Protection Agency‰??s lifetime health advisory, according to NASA.
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TRUMP EPA DISMISSES HALF OF SCIENTIFIC ADVISORY GROUP
Tags: public, discovery, environmental
A membership shake-up in an Environmental Protection Agency scientific advisory council could be a sign of more changes to come at the regulatory agency, policy experts are saying.
In an unusual action, EPA did not grant nine of the 18 members on its Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC) a second three-year term. An additional four were already scheduled to rotate off the board this year due to term limits, BOSC chairwoman and environmental chemist Deborah L. Swackhamer tells C&EN. Composed of scientists from outside the agency, the board reviews technical and management issues related to EPA‰??s in-house research.
The unexpected dismissals and statements from EPA officials leave Swackhamer and others concerned that the agency will open itself to potential conflicts of interest by filling the vacant slots with members from regulated industries.
EPA spokesman J.P. Freire says the agency has received hundreds of nominations to serve on the board, and the agency intends to ‰??carry out a competitive nomination process.‰??
Gretchen Goldman, research director of the Center for Science & Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is watching to see what the move portends for other scientific review groups at the agency. These include the Science Advisory Board, whose work is more closely tied to policy outcomes than BOSC‰??s, she says.
The move is another way that the Trump Administration is trying to take science out of the regulatory process, Goldman asserts. ‰??It builds on other actions that we‰??re seeing this administration take with respect to science and science advisors.‰??
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MYSTERY CHEMICAL LEAK SHUTS DOWN WARRENSBURG ROADS
Tags: us_IL, public, release, response, petroleum
WARRENSBURG ‰?? A chemical leak discovered in a field south of Warrensburg prompted the shutdown of Park and Hackney roads between West Street and Glasgow roads Monday.
The leak of what was described as ‰??an unknown petroleum product‰?? was discovered at 10:30 a.m coming from a field drainage tile, according to a statement from Lt. Jamie Belcher with the Macon County Sheriff's Office.
The affected roads remained closed Monday night as investigations continued involving experts from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency who were trying to find out what the chemical is and where it came from.
‰??The discharge has been contained and authorities do not believe there is any immediate threat to the public health,‰?? Belcher said.
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