June 4th, 2010 • 04:06
Friday round-up
Chemical health & safety stories from the last week:
- Does “English-only” make your lab a safer place?
- Southern Illinois University lab fire causes $250,000 damage (student cleaning pump parts with hexanes, taken to hospital for possible inhalation injuries)
- Georgia Tech students badly burned behind frat house (thermite reaction)
- Safety whistleblower spoke “on a matter of public concern” (court case involving unsafe biotech lab practices at Pfizer)
- ExxonMobil and Shell subsidiary in Linden cited by OSHA for chemical hazards (deficient process safety management system)
- Neighbors’ fears over chemical facility in Mass. resurface (hazardous waste facility)
- Iberia, La., worker in jail, arson is alleged (sounds like it was not so much arson as stupidity–cigarette into a drum of paint thinner)
- Chemical explosion in Maquoketa, Ia. (some sort of catalyst)
- No injuries in early Sunday explosion/fire at Invista in Del.
- Firefighter injured while responding at manufacturing plant in N.C. (“a flash fire in a 400- to 600-pound container holding byproducts of the manufacturing process”)
- For very young, peril lurks in lithium cell batteries [from the Pediatrics paper referenced in the story: generation of an external electrolytic current that hydrolyzes tissue fluids and produces hydroxide at the battery’s negative pole, plus leakage of alkaline electrolyte (hydroxide)]
- Queens students sickened, probably by contaminated water (propylene glycol for the air conditioning system got into the water supply)
- Hazmat team in Weston, Mass., for chemical fumes (“It was things people would have in their garage,” he said. “Over time, it got wet and it mixed together.”)
- Canadian woman suffers burns from splashed bleach
- Minor explosion at Texas school was chemical reaction (“a concoction of household cleaners”)
- Workshops, manual…Delhi University looks anew at lab safety (in response to auctioning off equipment containing radioactive materials)
- Dhaka chemical factory fire in India: 87 killed, 100 injured (“an explosion took place in an electrical transformer before the fire erupted, which later spread to the nearby houses and buildings”)
- 300 hospitalized in Nigeria explosion (chlorine gas cylinder explosion)
- C&EN Drugmakers wash painkillers down the drain
- C&EN Drilling process draws scrutiny (releasing natural gas from underground shale fields)
- C&EN DHS funding helps to secure chemical assets
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