CENtral Science

Friday chemical safety round-up

Chemical health and safety news from the past week:

• Chemjobber posted about safety signs
• OSHA cited Bostik for 50 safety violations (9 willful, 41 serious; pdf1, pdf2) and fined the company $917,000 in the case of a March explosion that injured four workers:
  

  Specifically, OSHA found that the process safety information for the solvation process was incomplete. The employer’s analysis of hazards related to the process did not address previous incidents with a potential for catastrophic results, such as forklifts that struck process equipment, and did not address human factors such as operator error, communication between shift changes and employee fatigue from excessive overtime. In addition, the company did not ensure that a forklift and electrical equipment, such as a light fixture, switches and a motor, were approved for use in Class 1 hazardous locations where flammable gases or vapors are present.

• A few drops of water ignited a jar of sodium hydride at the University of Reading, in the U.K.; the student then dropped the jar, the fire burnt part of the floor, and the room filled with some sort of gas

Fires and explosions:

• An explosion at the Centraco nuclear waste facility in France killed one person and injured another four but released no radioactivity; “the explosion took place in the foundry of the waste processing plant, which was melting about four tons of used, mildly radioactive metal objects
• An explosion at Jiangwei High Technology, which produces polyvinyl alcohol, killed three and wounded another three workers in China
• A tank containing 4,500 lbs of aluminum powder exploded in a railroad car, in turn igniting a chemical fire at Stollberg in New York; one worker was injured
• Eight acetylene tanks caught fire at a welding company in Virginia
• A flash fire injured one at hazmat gear provider and chemical testing company Geomet Technologies in Maryland

Leaks, spills, and other exposures:

• Another University of Chicago researcher was infected in their lab–this time a microbiologist with Bacillus cereus
• Titanium tetrachloride, a slow leak during transfer from a tanker truck to Equistar Chemical in New Jersey
• 10,000 gall of hydrochloric acid from an above-ground storage tank at Halliburton in Texas
• A New Jersey high school teacher mixed two chemicals that released some sort of vapor, resulting in “minor injuries in the area of her eyes”; she was reportedly working in a hood but without safety goggles
• About two ounces of nitrobeneze spilled at Cornell when an experimental apparatus was knocked over in a physics lab
• An Arkansas homeowner got hazmat and bomb squad response when he went to police “saying he had old chemicals that were bubbling and needed to be disposed”

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