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From: DCHAS Secretary <secretary**At_Symbol_Here**DCHAS.ORG>
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Chemical Safety headlines from Google (16 articles)
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2017 07:18:52 -0400
Reply-To: ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**PRINCETON.EDU>
Message-ID: 3DD1B53A-7454-4360-8C7E-B5A991C813E0**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
Chemical Safety Headlines From Google
Wednesday, September 13, 2017 at 7:18:38 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 (16 articles)
HAZMAT CREWS CALLED TO ANNAVILLE AREA FOR POSSIBLE CHEMICAL RELE
Tags: us_TX, public, release, injury, hydrogen_sulfide
PHOTOS: MN FIREFIGHTER CONTAIN CHLORINE LEAK
Tags: us_MN, industrial, release, response, chlorine, water_treatment
HARVEY'S FLOODING BLAMED IN MAJOR GASOLINE SPILL IN TEXAS
Tags: us_TX, transportation, release, response, gasoline, petroleum
LAWMAKERS CLASH OVER CHEMICAL RISK DATABASE
Tags: public, discovery, environmental
WACKER CHEMICAL PLANT SEES THIRD INCIDENT IN TWO WEEKS
Tags: us_TN, industrial, release, response, unknown_chemical
ONE PERSON OVERCOME BY FUMES AT NW GRAND RAPIDS CHEMICAL PLANT
Tags: us_MI, industrial, release, injury, ammonia
HAZMAT INCIDENT AT YALE SAID TO BE UNDER CONTROL
Tags: us_CT, laboratory, release, injury, nitric_acid
NBC-2.COM WBBH NEWS FOR FORT MYERS, CAPE CORAL & NAPLES, FLORIDA
Tags: us_FL, public, release, injury, carbon_monoxide
EPA OPENS INQUIRY INTO ARKEMA CHEMICAL PLANT EXPLOSION AFTER HARVEY FLOODING
Tags: us_TX, industrial, follow-up, response, peroxide
ONE DIES, 5 HURT AS BOILER EXPLODES AT CHEMICAL PLANT
Tags: India, industrial, explosion, death, drugs, pharmaceutical
FIRST RESPONDERS SUE ARKEMA
Tags: us_TX, industrial, follow-up, injury, flammables, peroxide
TANNERY CHEMICALS ARE 540 TIMES ABOVE EPA LEVEL IN BELMONT WELL
Tags: us_MI, industrial, discovery, environmental, other_chemical
COURT ORDER STOPS CHEMICAL DISCHARGE INTO CAPE FEAR RIVER
Tags: us_NC, industrial, release, response, waste
FEDS WORKING ON DOZENS OF CHEMICAL SPILLS IN TEXAS ‰?? RT AMERICA
Tags: us_TX, industrial, release, response, oils
IFFCO TO STOP INVESTMENT IN CHEMICAL FERTILISERS, NEED TO BRING BALANCE IN ENVIRONMENT, SAYS MD UDAY SHANKER AWASTHI
Tags: India, industrial, discovery, environmental, ag_chems
BUSY LEAMINGTON ROAD RE-OPENS FOLLOWING CHEMICAL LEAK
Tags: United_Kingdom, industrial, release, response, ammonia
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HAZMAT CREWS CALLED TO ANNAVILLE AREA FOR POSSIBLE CHEMICAL RELE
Tags: us_TX, public, release, injury, hydrogen_sulfide
Emergency crews were called to the area of Sedwick Road and Stillwell Lane, near Clarkwood Road in Annaville, after a worker in the area was hospitalized due to a possible chemical release.
Hazmat crews were called to the area to investigate and confirmed readings of H2S (hydrogen sulfide).
"At this this time there is absolutely no hazard to the public from this release and we are just advising the public to stay clear of this Clarkwood and Sedwick area for the time being," an official with CCPD on the scene said.
It is unclear what kind of symptoms the man who was hospitalized had. His condition is currently unknown.
---------------------------------------------
PHOTOS: MN FIREFIGHTER CONTAIN CHLORINE LEAK
Tags: us_MN, industrial, release, response, chlorine, water_treatment
A state hazmat team was requested to help Red Wing firefighters mitigate an incident involving a chlorine leak on Sept. 11
The Red Wing Fire Department was called out to the Prairie Island water treatment facility for a chlorine leak.
Firefighters worked with Prairie Island police to evacuate the area and assess the scene. The statewide Chemical Assessment Team was requested and St. Paul Fire Department resources were deployed.
Responders were able to stop the leak and ventilate the building before placing the incident under control.
---------------------------------------------
HARVEY'S FLOODING BLAMED IN MAJOR GASOLINE SPILL IN TEXAS
Tags: us_TX, transportation, release, response, gasoline, petroleum
Hurricane Harvey's floodwaters triggered a spill of almost a half-million gallons of gasoline from two storage tanks along the Houston Ship Channel, marking the largest spill reported to date from a storm that slammed into the heart of Texas' huge petrochemical industry.
The spill measured 10,988 barrels, or more than 461,000 gallons, and occurred at a petroleum tank farm in Galena Park operated by Magellan Midstream Partners, according to the Oklahoma-based company and accident reports submitted to federal officials.
Some of the spilled fuel flowed into a waterway adjacent to the ship channel, a heavily-industrialized area that's lined with dozens of petrochemical facilities, the reports said.
Gasoline is more volatile than oil, meaning it evaporates more quickly after it's spilled. But it's also more likely to catch fire and can more rapidly penetrate the soil and potentially contaminate groundwater supplies.
Magellan spokesman Bruce Heine said the gasoline that reached the small, unnamed waterway had been contained. The spilled fuel was sprayed with foam to prevent it from releasing harmful vapors, he said.
"Federal and state regulators have been on-site during the recovery and clean-up procedures," Heine said. "Clean-up activities at the facility are continuing and we are currently removing and replacing affected soil."
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LAWMAKERS CLASH OVER CHEMICAL RISK DATABASE
Tags: public, discovery, environmental
A database used to evaluate the risk of certain chemicals has become a flashpoint of debate among lawmakers.
Called the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), the EPA-led effort provides an encyclopedia-like guide to state agencies on toxic hazards to help them assess the impact of a chemical accident or spill.
In his budget, President Trump proposed eliminating funding for the program all together. But a House appropriations bill this summer instead cut some funding but kept the program above water.
Now Democrats and Republicans have continued to butt heads over whether or not the program is running smoothly ‰?? and what its future should be.
At a Sept. 6 hearing before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, Republicans criticized the EPA for not making changes that were proposed in 2014.
---------------------------------------------
WACKER CHEMICAL PLANT SEES THIRD INCIDENT IN TWO WEEKS
Tags: us_TN, industrial, release, response, unknown_chemical
Alarms went off for the third time in two weeks at the Wacker Chemical Plant in Charleston, Tenn., on Tuesday, causing employees to again take shelter onsite.
A release from the company stated workers detected "a slight elevation of residual chemicals stemming from the September 7 incident."
"According to emergency protocol and precautionary measures, Wacker issued an onsite shelter in place, which has been lifted. There was no risk to the community or employees," the statement read.
"Safety is our top priority along with the care and well-being of our employees and our community. Our commitment to safety remains our primary focus."
A separate release from Bradley County Schools stated alarms were set off while work was being done on "damaged pipes with chemical residue."
---------------------------------------------
ONE PERSON OVERCOME BY FUMES AT NW GRAND RAPIDS CHEMICAL PLANT
Tags: us_MI, industrial, release, injury, ammonia
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - One person was overcome by fumes in a minor incident at a Grand Rapids chemical manufacturer.
The incident was reported at Haviland Enterprises at 421 Ann Street NW at about 1:30 p.m. The company makes chemicals for swimming pools and other needs.
Grand Rapids Fire Battalion Chief Bruce Veldkamp tells FOX 17 that there was a small release of ammonia hydroxide while crews were unloading a truck at the plant. The release happened inside the building and there were no safety concerns to the neighborhood. One employee was taken to the hospital for observation.
About 30 employees were evacuated from the plant as a precaution. Veldkamp says all safety procedures were followed, everyone was accounted for and the neighborhood was not in any danger.
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HAZMAT INCIDENT AT YALE SAID TO BE UNDER CONTROL
Tags: us_CT, laboratory, release, injury, nitric_acid
NEW HAVEN ‰?? A hazmat incident at Yale University has been brought under control.
The New Haven Fire Chief tweeted the incident involving chemicals was under control shortly after 5 p. m.
The chemical accident occurred at the Yale University Chemical Research Building, located on 275 Prospect St. Officials said a 27-year-old student was working in one of the labs and handling different chemical mixtures, including a nitric acid mixture..
The student picked up a bottle he thought was empty, however it was not, according to officials. This bottle had traces of a lab substance containing a volatile chemical mixture ‰?? the bottle itself was also overpressured. Due to the pressure build-up, the bottle broke and splattered all over the student. Small specks were sent flying everywhere. Minor traces went all over the room, so DEEP was called in to assist.
The spill itself is still considered minor, but because it got onto the victim‰??s outer clothing he was transported to a hospital. The student is doing fine, they suffered no life-threatening injuries.The building was built back in 1954, but has been modernized for safety (specifically for dealing with these types of incidents).
---------------------------------------------
NBC-2.COM WBBH NEWS FOR FORT MYERS, CAPE CORAL & NAPLES, FLORIDA
Tags: us_FL, public, release, injury, carbon_monoxide
BONITA SPRINGS, Fla. -
A total of 20 people were sent to three different hospitals after waking up vomiting in Bonita Springs.
Multiple units responded to a home on Red Bud Lane off of Imperial Parkway ‰?? just south of Bonita Beach Road ‰?? Tuesday morning.
We were told this was a hazardous materials situation and found out that they were staying in the home during the storm and using a generator that was inside the home.
Family members say one of the cousins said he felt numb while others complained of headaches, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting.
After authorities arrived and investigated, there is no longer any carbon monoxide in the house.
Those 20 people include 13 children and seven adults. At least two of the children were infants while the oldest child was 15 years old. They were sent to Golisano Children's Hospital, North Collier Hospital, and Gulf Coast Medical Center.
---------------------------------------------
EPA OPENS INQUIRY INTO ARKEMA CHEMICAL PLANT EXPLOSION AFTER HARVEY FLOODING
Tags: us_TX, industrial, follow-up, response, peroxide
The Environmental Protection Agency has opened an inquiry into whether the Arkema chemical plant in Crosby, Texas followed federal safety rules to protect against hazards, following explosions at the facility that resulted from Hurricane Harvey flooding.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told the Washington Examiner on Monday he authorized a request for information to Arkema under Section 114 of the Clean Air Act about whether the company complied with a risk management plan filed with the federal government.
Depending on the information obtained by the EPA, the agency can issue administrative, civil or criminal action against Arkema, a multinational company based in France.
"I issued something called a 114 letter, which was a communication to Arkema to say you need to advise and inform me about your risk management plan [RMP] and whether you followed the specifics of the RMP and were you adequately prepared," Pruitt told the Washington Examiner in an interview. "There is some question about whether the RMP that was in place there was actually complied with."
The EPA, in a letter issued Sept. 7 and obtained by Washington Examiner, has ordered Arkema to respond within 10 days to questions about the handling of chemicals known as organic peroxides, which are combustible if not kept refrigerated. The EPA also wants to know the amount of chemical materials kept at the plant, and the measures taken in advance to guard against flooding and loss of electricity.
---------------------------------------------
ONE DIES, 5 HURT AS BOILER EXPLODES AT CHEMICAL PLANT
Tags: India, industrial, explosion, death, drugs, pharmaceutical
Nellore: A worker was killed and five others received severe injuries after a boiler exploded at a chemical factory at Meganuru near Gudur on Monday morning. The deceased was identified as Avinash of the village. The villagers expressed anger over the factory management for setting up the plant without displaying any name and details of operations and were shocked with the explosion which triggered panic among them.
The five injured workers were rushed to a nearby private hospital soon after they were rescued from the spot after the explosion. In fact, the local people blamed the management that it had announced earlier that they would be setting up an ayurvedic pharmaceutical company but now they find carcasses of animals with quite unhygienic conditions prevailing at the plant which turned out to be a bone milling unit.
There is bad odour emanating from the plant frequently, they complained. Recently, some villagers of Meganuru lodged a complaint with local tahsildar asking how an ayurvedic pharma company has been maintaining unsanitary conditions and raised doubts over its operations.
---------------------------------------------
FIRST RESPONDERS SUE ARKEMA
Tags: us_TX, industrial, follow-up, injury, flammables, peroxide
One week after the first of nine trailers containing organic peroxides caught fire at an Arkema facility in Crosby, Texas, seven first responders have filed a lawsuit against the chemical company.
The Sept. 7 suit alleges that Arkema was negligent in failing to properly prepare for a power outage, which created dangerous conditions for storing flammable organic peroxides. Lack of refrigeration at the site, which was inundated with nearly 2 meters of water from Tropical Storm Harvey, caused the chemicals to degrade and explode. The suit alleges the first responders were exposed to unspecified ‰??toxic fumes‰?? early on Thursday, Aug. 31.
According to the Houston Chronicle, 15 Harris County deputies and eight emergency medical services personnel were hospitalized due to exposure to fumes. One of the plaintiffs in the case, Christy Graves, is the director of Harris County Emergency Services District 5, based in Crosby.
The first responders were guarding a 2.4 km perimeter around the Crosby site by taking up a position on a nearby road to prevent traffic from entering an evacuation zone set up by local safety officials, according to Kimberley M. Spurlock, the attorney representing the seven responders.
At roughly 2 AM, Spurlock tells C&EN, the responders became overwhelmed by fumes. They used emergency radios to ask about the status of the chemical plant but were told that no incident was reported. According to the suit, ‰??one by one, the police officers and first responders began to fall ill in the middle of the road.‰?? Medical personnel who responded to the scene, the suit continues, also became overwhelmed and began to vomit and gasp for air.
---------------------------------------------
TANNERY CHEMICALS ARE 540 TIMES ABOVE EPA LEVEL IN BELMONT WELL
Tags: us_MI, industrial, discovery, environmental, other_chemical
BELMONT, MI -- Residential drinking water testing next to an old Wolverine World Wide tannery dump site has found hazardous chemical levels on one property that are 540 times the federal health advisory level at which chronic exposure is considered unsafe.
Well sampling records show a home on the 1800 block of House Street NE in Plainfield Township tested at 37,800 parts-per-trillion (ppt) combined for perfluoroctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluoroctanoic acid (PFOA) -- a pair of industrial chemicals that are polluting the groundwater near the old tannery dump in Belmont.
The property, directly across the street from the dump site, was first tested July 18 and retested on Aug. 16 to double check the extremely high pollution result.
---------------------------------------------
COURT ORDER STOPS CHEMICAL DISCHARGE INTO CAPE FEAR RIVER
Tags: us_NC, industrial, release, response, waste
Chemours has agreed to stop dumping certain chemicals into the Cape Fear River, state officials said Monday.
The company entered into a partial consent order with the N.C. Department of Environmental Quality on Friday. The order, signed by Bladen County Resident Superior Court Judge Douglas B. Sasser, says Chemours will immediately prevent the discharge of certain ‰??PFESA compounds‰?? until a permit authorizing the discharge is issued.
The state refers to the substances as ‰??Nafion byproducts 1 and 2,‰?? according to Jamie Kritzer, a state Department of Environmental Quality spokesman.
Gary Cambre, a Chemours spokesman, has said Nafion is a brand name for the company‰??s membrane products. The compounds are byproducts of the Ion Exchange Materials production unit at the plant, he said.
Nafion products are used in energy storage, fuel cells, chemical production, waste recovery and other applications, according to the Chemours website.
Chemours officials did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment about the order.
State officials were seeking a halt to the discharge of the compounds as part of an investigation into Chemours release of GenX into the river. The N.C. Department of Environmental Quality and Department of Health and Human Services began the investigation in June, when news broke that researchers had found GenX in the river below the company‰??s Bladen County plant last year.
---------------------------------------------
FEDS WORKING ON DOZENS OF CHEMICAL SPILLS IN TEXAS ‰?? RT AMERICA
Tags: us_TX, industrial, release, response, oils
The US Coast Guard and the Environmental Protection Agency are assisting Texas state regulators in cleaning dozens of toxic spills from the vast network of petrochemical plants and refineries in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
EPA spokeswoman Terri White said it was not possible to provide an estimate for the amount of chemicals spilled.
‰??Initial reports were based on observation,‰?? White said, according to Reuters. ‰??Some spills were already being cleaned up by the time EPA or other officials arrived to assess them and other had already migrated offsite.‰??
However, the Coast Guard‰??s National Response Center tracks reports of oil spills and other chemical releases, which can be filed by corporations or the public.
---------------------------------------------
IFFCO TO STOP INVESTMENT IN CHEMICAL FERTILISERS, NEED TO BRING BALANCE IN ENVIRONMENT, SAYS MD UDAY SHANKER AWASTHI
Tags: India, industrial, discovery, environmental, ag_chems
New Delhi, September 10: Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) Managing Director Uday Shanker Awasthi on Monday said the company will no longer invest in manufacturing of chemical fertilisers, due to its hazardous impact on the environment. Awasthi said people are still are unaware of the bad impact of fertilisers on soil and it adversely affects the environment.
Awasthi conceded agriculture cannot be made free from chemical fertilisers.
The investment on bio-fertilisers will be also increased.
India needs to learn from the experiments in China and the USA.
Addressing a meet of senior journalists in New Delhi, the IFFCO MD announced that the cooperative will ‰??not even invest a rupee on chemical fertilisers‰??. Instead, the investment on bio-fertilisers will be also increased. Citing the examples of China and the United States of America, Awasthi said ‰??we need to learn from their experiments‰??. While China decided to stop investment in the production of chemical fertilisers, the USA has prohibited the use of fertilisers in the farms on the shores of Mississippi river, he noted.
However, Awasthi conceded agriculture cannot be made free from chemical fertilisers. Thus, a balance between biofertilizers and their chemical counterparts need to established, he opined.
---------------------------------------------
BUSY LEAMINGTON ROAD RE-OPENS FOLLOWING CHEMICAL LEAK
Tags: United_Kingdom, industrial, release, response, ammonia
A CHEMICAL leak saw part of a busy Leamington road closed off overnight on Saturday.
Police received a report of a strong chemical smell in the Tachbrook Road area, following an ammonia leak from a nearby factory, around 7pm on Saturday.
The immediate area by the Tachbrook Park industrial estate was cordoned off as a precaution and West Midlands Ambulance Service and Warwickshire Fire and Rescue attended.
No injuries were reported but local residents were advised to close all windows and doors to minimise any potential exposure.
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