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Chemical Safety Headlines From Google
Friday, March 19, 2021 at 6:36:34 AM
A service of the ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety
Connecting Chemistry and Safety at http://www.dchas.org
All article summaries and tags are archived at http://pinboard.in/u:dchas
Table of Contents (13 articles)
HOMES, APARTMENTS IN LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD EVACUATED AFTER BREAK IN 12-INCH GAS LINE
Tags: us_TX, public, release, response, natural_gas
ALPENA COUNTY TO REMOVE HAZARDOUS MATERIAL FROM FAIRGROUNDS ‰?? WBKB 11
Tags: us_MI, industrial, discovery, response, waste
UPDATE: SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE AT VIERA HOME BRINGS IN HAZMAT TEAM, TWO PEOPLE REFUSE TREATMENT
Tags: us_FL, public, release, response, unknown_chemical
TWITTER FEED ALERTS PEOPLE TO POLLUTION PROBLEMS
Tags: us_TX, public, discovery, environmental
LEARNING CHEMISTRY: EXPLORING THE SUITABILITY OF MACHINE LEARNING FOR THE TASK OF STRUCTURE-BASED CHEMICAL ONTOLOGY CLASSIFICATION
Tags: Europe, laboratory, discovery, environmental
LEBANON APPROVES FUND TO REMOVE HAZARDOUS MATERIAL FROM BEIRUT'S PORT
Tags: Lebanon, public, follow-up, environmental, flammables
FIRE, EXPLOSIONS AT CORNELIUS ETHANOL FACILITY PROMPT EVACUATION
Tags: us_OR, industrial, explosion, response, ethanol
HAZMAT TEAM CALLED TO AID SHERMAN TRANSFORMER FIRE
Tags: us_TX, public, fire, response, toxics
CANBERRA‰??S SCHOOLS WITH HAZARDOUS MATERIALS REVEALED
Tags: Australia, education, discovery, environmental, asbestos, lead_dust
WEST CHESTER FD ASKING NEARBY RESIDENTS TO SHELTER IN PLACE AFTER CHEMICAL SPILL
Tags: us_OH, industrial, release, response, HCl, hydrochloric_acid
UNDERSTAFFED CHEMICAL SAFETY BOARD RIPE FOR REVAMP AS PROBES LAG
Tags: public, discovery, environmental
EPA LEADER SCRUTINIZES DICAMBA RULE
Tags: us_AR, public, discovery, environmental, pesticides
GHS IMPLEMENTATION TO STRENGTHEN GLOBAL CHEMICAL HAZARD COMMUNICATION: WILL WE EVER GET THERE?
Tags: Malaysia, public, discovery, environmental
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HOMES, APARTMENTS IN LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD EVACUATED AFTER BREAK IN 12-INCH GAS LINE
https://www.kwtx.com/2021/03/18/homes-apartments-in-local-neighborhood-evacuated-after-break-in-12-inch-gas-line/
Tags: us_TX, public, release, response, natural_gas
WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Police and firefighters evacuated homes and apartments Thursday in a South Waco neighborhood after a break in a 12-inch natural gas line.
The break was reported at around 12:15 p.m. Thursday in the 2400 block of South 2nd Street south of La Salle Avenue.
Residents were evacuated from two nearby apartment complexes because of the leak in the underground line.
An Atmos crew completed repairs at around 2:30 p.m.
The scene was cleared and residents were allowed to return home.
---------------------------------------------
ALPENA COUNTY TO REMOVE HAZARDOUS MATERIAL FROM FAIRGROUNDS ‰?? WBKB 11
http://www.wbkb11.com/alpena-county-to-remove-hazardous-material-from-fairgrounds
Tags: us_MI, industrial, discovery, response, waste
ALPENA, Mich. ‰?? Alpena County has approved the removal of hazardous waste from the Fairgrounds.
The Finance Committee voted this morning to remove the waste, which is in the form of 55-gallon drums of paint. Since these were disposed of improperly in the landfill, the county needs to hire an outside company to dispose of the waste. Officials say the only way to dispose of these materials is to make sure they are first completely dry.
‰??People bring in paint, and that‰??s considered hazardous material,‰?? Chairman Bill Peterson said. ‰??We had to bring a company in and dispose of it.‰??
There is no set timetable right now for the removal of the waste.
---------------------------------------------
UPDATE: SUSPICIOUS PACKAGE AT VIERA HOME BRINGS IN HAZMAT TEAM, TWO PEOPLE REFUSE TREATMENT
https://spacecoastdaily.com/2021/03/suspicious-package-at-viera-home-brings-in-hazmat-team-two-people-refuse-treatment/
Tags: us_FL, public, release, response, unknown_chemical
*UPDATE ‰?? Officials say the substance has been tested by Hazmat and has been determined to be a non-hazardous substance that caused the mild respiratory irritation of the two residents.
BREVARD COUNTY ‰?¢ VIERA, FLORIDA ‰?? Brevard County officials were on the scene of Hazmat incident Wednesday afternoon in Viera near Crane Creek Boulevard.
A spokesperson with Brevard County Fire Rescue says a suspicious package was discovered, along with two patients found that were initially having difficulties breathing.
A Hazmat team was working on making entry.
The two people who initially had difficulties breathing refused care, according to Brevard County Fire Rescue.
---------------------------------------------
TWITTER FEED ALERTS PEOPLE TO POLLUTION PROBLEMS
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2021/03/18/twitter-feed-alerts-people-to-pollution-problems/
Tags: us_TX, public, discovery, environmental
HOUSTON ‰?? How would you describe the smell of the air here in Houston?
The refineries are big business for our region. But, if you‰??re concerned about the dangers of pollution, there is a way you can track air pollution right on your phone.
However, the closer we looked, the more we found that some pollution concerns might not be reported on that platform or readily available at all during an environmental emergency.
ITC Fire: March 17, 2019
Two years ago, in Deer Park there was chaos and confusion.
There was a massive fire at a chemical storage company named ITC (Intercontinental Terminals Company) and initially, nobody had a handle on what was leaking into the air.
There were state-run air quality monitors in the area.
---------------------------------------------
LEARNING CHEMISTRY: EXPLORING THE SUITABILITY OF MACHINE LEARNING FOR THE TASK OF STRUCTURE-BASED CHEMICAL ONTOLOGY CLASSIFICATION
https://jcheminf.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13321-021-00500-8#author-information
Tags: Europe, laboratory, discovery, environmental
Chemical data is increasingly openly available in databases such as PubChem, which contains approximately 110 million compound entries as of February 2021. With the availability of data at such scale, the burden has shifted to organisation, analysis and interpretation. Chemical ontologies provide structured classifications of chemical entities that can be used for navigation and filtering of the large chemical space. ChEBI is a prominent example of a chemical ontology, widely used in life science contexts. However, ChEBI is manually maintained and as such cannot easily scale to the full scope of public chemical data. There is a need for tools that are able to automatically classify chemical data into chemical ontologies, which can be framed as a hierarchical multi-class classification problem. In this paper we evaluate machine learning approaches for this task, comparing different learning frameworks including logistic regression, decision trees and long short-term memory ar!
tificial neural networks, and different encoding approaches for the chemical structures, including cheminformatics fingerprints and character-based encoding from chemical line notation representations. We find that classical learning approaches such as logistic regression perform well with sets of relatively specific, disjoint chemical classes, while the neural network is able to handle larger sets of overlapping classes but needs more examples per class to learn from, and is not able to make a class prediction for every molecule. Future work will explore hybrid and ensemble approaches, as well as alternative network architectures including neuro-symbolic approaches.
---------------------------------------------
LEBANON APPROVES FUND TO REMOVE HAZARDOUS MATERIAL FROM BEIRUT'S PORT
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-03/16/c_139815063.htm
Tags: Lebanon, public, follow-up, environmental, flammables
BEIRUT, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese President Michel Aoun approved on Tuesday allocating part of a World Bank loan to fund the removal of dangerous containers at Beirut's Port, a statement by Lebanon's presidency reported.
"President Aoun stressed the need to take necessary steps to ship the hazardous materials that are still stored at the port, in accordance with the laws and regulations in force," Public Works and Transport Minister Michel Najjar said following his meeting with Aoun at Baabda Palace.
The German company Combi Lift packed, last month, 52 containers of flammable materials found at Beirut's port following the two big blasts that rocked the port on Aug. 4, 2020. The company did not ship the containers yet, waiting for a payment to be made by Lebanon.
---------------------------------------------
FIRE, EXPLOSIONS AT CORNELIUS ETHANOL FACILITY PROMPT EVACUATION
https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2021/03/fire-reported-explosions-at-ethanol-facility-prompt-evacuation-in-cornelius.html
Tags: us_OR, industrial, explosion, response, ethanol
Explosions and a large fire at a Cornelius business that produces ethanol prompted an evacuation Tuesday afternoon.
Firefighters were dispatched at 1:30 p.m. to initial reports of a fuel tank on fire at a facility on the 500 block of North 4th Avenue. Crews initially began working to extinguish the fire but were pulled back to a safe distance due to ‰??explosions and erratic fire conditions,‰?? Forest Grove Fire & Rescue spokesperson Matt Johnston said Tuesday night.
The Cornelius Fire Department said the fire was ‰??under control‰?? a little after 7 p.m. Hazmat and Portland Airport crews were re-assessing the situation in hopes of fully extinguishing the fires. Shortly after, residents were able to to their homes and roads were re-opened.
The flames erupted at the Summit Foods Inc. complex on North 4th Avenue, which also houses subsidiary Thunderbolt Racing Fuel, said Allen Shapiro, a distributor for the fuel company. Shapiro told The Oregonian/OregonLive he had been in contact with an employee of the company who told him everyone in the building had gotten out safe after the fire started.
---------------------------------------------
HAZMAT TEAM CALLED TO AID SHERMAN TRANSFORMER FIRE
https://www.kxii.com/2021/03/17/hazmat-team-called-to-aid-sherman-transformer-fire/
Tags: us_TX, public, fire, response, toxics
SHERMAN, Texas (KXII) - Firefighters say it started behind the First United Bank Building in the 2000 block of Texoma Parkway near Grand Avenue Tuesday evening.
They say the transformer is older, and carried about 70 gallons of toxic chemicals, known as PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenals.
A hazmat team with Oncore was called to aid firefighters.
Officials say the transformer supplies the electricity, and say everyone inside the building at the time was able to safely evacuate.
---------------------------------------------
CANBERRA‰??S SCHOOLS WITH HAZARDOUS MATERIALS REVEALED
https://www.hit.com.au/story/canberra-s-schools-with-lead-paint-and-asbestos-revealed-169039
Tags: Australia, education, discovery, environmental, asbestos, lead_dust
A total of 76 Canberra Public Schools have been identified as having either traces of lead paint or asbestos.
The Education Minister, Yvette Berry made the list publicly available on Wednesday, after coming under fire from the Liberals demanding to know which schools were affected.
Ms Berry on Monday said testing of the hazardous materials during the summer school holidays all returned results below safe levels.
‰??None of the testing has identified any of the lead dust in any of the teaching or learning spaces.‰??
The Education Directorate said its committed to maintaining the Territory‰??s school buildings of varying ages.
---------------------------------------------
WEST CHESTER FD ASKING NEARBY RESIDENTS TO SHELTER IN PLACE AFTER CHEMICAL SPILL
https://www.wlwt.com/article/matter-of-fact-citizenship-test/35850474
Tags: us_OH, industrial, release, response, HCl, hydrochloric_acid
WEST CHESTER TOWNSHIP, Ohio ‰??
A shelter-in-place advisory has been lifted after fire crews responded to a chemical spill in West Chester on Monday.
Crews were called out around 11:18 a.m. to 4544 Muhlhauser Road for a burst chemical pipe at a business, according to the fire department.
Hazmat crews identified the leak as hydrochloric acid and contained the spill for the most part to the building.
Some of the spill leaked into a creek and is now being handled by the EPA.
A shelter-in-place advisory was issued for residents within a half mile of the spill out of an abundance of caution. The shelter in place has since been lifted.
Officials gave an update at 1 p.m. saying crews are continuing to clean up the scene and Muhlhauser Road will be closed for at least another hour.
---------------------------------------------
UNDERSTAFFED CHEMICAL SAFETY BOARD RIPE FOR REVAMP AS PROBES LAG
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/safety/understaffed-chemical-safety-board-ripe-for-revamp-as-probes-lag
Tags: public, discovery, environmental
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is running on fumes. With 80% of its board seats vacant and more than a dozen open investigations, CSB staffers are being asked to take on management responsibilities while the agency is run by Trump administration holdover Katherine Lemos, a self-proclaimed quorum of one.
The Biden administration can change that, but it‰??s given scant indication it‰??ll do so any time soon.
The CSB investigates the causes of chemical disasters and issues recommendations to other federal agencies, companies, and the public to reduce the risk of future accidents. At least three times, former President Donald Trump proposed budgets calling for the agency‰??s elimination.
---------------------------------------------
EPA LEADER SCRUTINIZES DICAMBA RULE
https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2021/mar/16/epa-leader-scrutinizes-dicamba-rule/
Tags: us_AR, public, discovery, environmental, pesticides
Politics interfered with science in the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration's decision in 2018 to allow in-crop use of dicamba for another two years, one of its top administrators said in a recent email to employees.
"Over the past few years, I am aware that political interference sometimes compromised the integrity of our science," Michal Freedhoff, the new acting assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, wrote in a March 10 email to all employees in her division.
"DTN/Progressive Farmer," an agriculture news outlet, on Friday first reported Freedhoff's email. The news outlet also reported that Freedhoff said at a recent conference of pesticide regulators that results of this year's crop season could bring a review of the Trump administration's decision last fall to register three dicamba formulations through the 2025 crop season.
"This is a new day, about communication, trust, transparency and the importance of science in our regulatory decision-making process," Freedhoff also wrote. "All of us are responsible for ensuring the scientific integrity of our work. All of us are responsible for creating a work environment where everyone feels free to speak up without fear."
The EPA's press office on Monday confirmed Freedhoff's email and comments
---------------------------------------------
GHS IMPLEMENTATION TO STRENGTHEN GLOBAL CHEMICAL HAZARD COMMUNICATION: WILL WE EVER GET THERE?
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chas.0c00114
Tags: Malaysia, public, discovery, environmental
The establishment of the Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) is one of the global initiatives to promote effective chemical hazard communication worldwide. Ultimately, the GHS aims to enhance safe use of chemicals, as well as to facilitate chemical trading across national borders. Countries that are now adopting GHS into their respective national legislations include the EU, US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Malaysia. Nonetheless, challenges exist that might impede GHS implementation worldwide. These challenges have been identified and are discussed in this paper, namely, (i) adoption of different versions of the GHS document, (ii) adoption of building blocks, (iii) list of classified chemicals, (iv) different chemical mixture classification throughout the supply chain, and (v) the definition of GHS implementation. The challenges discussed in this paper are not to discourage countries from implementing GHS but, rather, to serve as input f!
or the relevant entities to further strengthen GHS implementation worldwide.
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