CENtral Science

Friday round-up

Chemical health & safety stories from the past week:

• Gummi Bear detonates (KClO₃ + H₂SO₄ + bear)
• Acute antimicrobial pesticide-related illnesses among workers in health-care facilities (gluteraldehyde, bleach, quarternary ammonium compounds, and such)
• C&EN Busy week of oil investigations
• Unstable, explosive chemicals removed from Voorhees College, S.C. (25-year-old diethyl ether)
• Explosion injures two at Texas A&M (dry ice stuck in a glass tube correct info here)
• Southern Methodist University student burned in chem lab (sodium hydride + water, sounds like maybe the student was quenching a solution)
• University of Wisconsin, Madison, professor barred from lab for potentially dangerous experiments (infectious disease research at the veterinary school)
• Gas meter in Conn. fatal explosion to be tested
• More on the radioactive material from lab equipment that landed in an Indian scrapyard: Radiation death sparks Indian safety enquiry
• Union Pacific announced its annual Chemical Transportation Safety Pinnacle Awards
• C&EN Worker safety: OSHA administrator calls for more federal collaboration
• C&EN Chemical toxicity database is released (EPA’s ToxRefDB)
• C&EN Arsenic speciation key to poisoning risk

There were also a few fires at chemical plants, but this list seemed long enough as it was. Have a safe weekend, everyone.