CENtral Science

Friday round-up

Chemical health and safety news from the past week:

• By yours truly, a look at Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s High Explosives Applications Facility–what they do and how they do it (carefully)
• From the Risk Science Blog, Do messages of safety create fear and vice versa?
• The University of California Center for Laboratory Safety now has a website: www.cls.ucla.edu
• Cal/OSHA fined oil recycler Evergreen Oil nearly $22,000 for an incident in which malfunctioning equipment started a fire that caused a hydrochloric acid tank to rupture; the company is appealing

Fires and explosions:

• A fire at New York titanium scrap processor Goldman Titanium is the second in three months, and neighbors aren’t happy about exposure to the fire-fighting foam
• A fire at Hebei Jianxin Chemical in China reportedly “was ignited by nitrobenzene created after sulfur trioxide leaked from the chemical workshop met humid air” (anyone want to try to balance that reaction? SO₃ + H₂O -> C₆H₅NO₂?)
• This sounds like a fuel fire but I’m including it because I’m amused by the Seattle Weekly blog post: Washington man burned in explosion while making hashish. Investigators “found 6.5 pounds of marijuana, butane bottles, drug paraphernalia and hashish” and the blog adds “In the interest of public safety, here are three helpful videos on making hash–none of which involve the use of butane bottles.” (A commenter then adds that “People who make hash oil often use butane.”)

Leaks, spills, and other exposures:

• 4,200 gallons of methanol mixed with oil production fluid spilled when a pipe failed at a BP oil field in Alaska
• Hydrogen sulfide at a Shell refinery in Australia, two workers suffered “mild expolsure”
• Half a ton of aluminum chloride spilled at International Flavours and Fragrances in the U.K.
• Toluene at American Synthetic Rubber Company in Kentucky sent one worker to the hospital because he got some in an eye
• Mercury in a Rhode Island church classroom when a cleaning crew knocked over the container; also in a New Jersey home
• Bromine when a container broke while a New Zealand high school teacher was prepping for a lab, sounds like she got a lungful or two
• On roads, railways, and shipyards: muriatic acid, a pesticide, sulfuric acid

Not covered: meth labs; ammonia leaks; incidents involving floor sealants, cleaning solutions, or pool chemicals; and fires from oil, natural gas, or other fuels