CENtral Science

Friday round-up

Chemical health and safety news from the past week:

• From the blogosphere–OSHA poised to act on chemical hazards from The Pump Handle, In the Pipeline adds nitrotetrazole oxides to the list of things Derek won’t work with
• The National Academy of engineering issued a report on what went wrong on the Deepwater Horizon–BP chose less expensive, higher-risk routes before oil well blowout, scientists say, What BP should have done
• UK government apologises over removal of body parts from ex-nuclear workers–”The removal of organs and other tissues from the bodies of 76 former workers at nuclear plants over a 30-year period that began in the 1960s should not have happened and was the result of “unacceptable working practices” in the [National Health Service], the coroners service and the nuclear industry”
• Engineer banned from chemistry in explosives case–”Retired electrical engineer Ronald Swerlein received the unusual sentence Friday after his second explosives possession conviction. Swerlein holds 11 patents but suffered a brain injury in a car wreck and has said he didn’t understand conditions of his previous conviction.”
• Chemical safety in the biodiesel industry–”Despite the industry’s good-faith efforts for enforcing chemical safety practices, its track record can tell a different story. From 2006 until 2009, approximately 21 accidents occurred in the form of fires or explosions, according to information reported in Biodiesel Magazine. Of that total, nearly half were linked to improper handling or containment of hazardous chemicals.”
• North Dakota State University esearch lab closed after chemical scare–something involving high-capacity battery research and lithium at the school’s Center for Nanoscience and Engineering
• Army tested 17 pounds of Agent Orange chemical on sections of Fort Detrick between 1944 and 1968

Fires and explosions

• Four workers injured in blaze at Dera Bassi chemical factory in India–”chemical stored in plastic drums caught fire from a spark emanated from a reactor in the production plant on the second floor of the building”
• Homemade rocket fuel, one killed
• 75 3-pound containers of aluminum phosphide stored in a barn in California–”Firefighters had to let the barn and its contents burn because the chemical is water-reactive and would have become even more dangerous had fire crews poured water on the blaze”
• Explosion averted: Dried-out picric acid at the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation building, discovered in a lab relocation

Leaks, spills, and other exposures

• A pound of mercury in buckets a California home–”a man in the home was extracting mercury from computer components, but it’s unclear what he planned to do with the metal”
• Ammonia at a Canadian recreation center and a supermarket distribution center in Ohio
• 300 gallons of formaldehyde at the loading dock of the Medical College of Wisconsin
• Nitrogen dioxide at Lubrizol in Ohio
• A dust cloud of olymethyl methacrylate at Marktec in Georgia
• Toluene at a printing firm in Massachusetts
• Homemade bug spray in Kansas–”chemical fumes from an apartment on the seventh floor triggered a fire alarm” and police originally thought it was a meth lab
• On the roadways: magnesium phosphide and anhydrous ammonia