Links to details available at
us_wv: Bayer, OSHA settle case over fatal 2008
explosion
We=92ve got the story in
today=92s Gazette that Bayer CropScience has agreed to pay OSHA fines of
$143,000 related to the 2008 explosion and fire that killed two workers
at the company=92s Institute chemical plant.
That=92s
the same as the original amount that OSHA fined Bayer following its
investigation of the Aug. 28, 2008, incident in the Institute plant
Methomyl unit.
But, OSHA agreed to reclassify one of the two =93repeat=94
citations issued to Bayer as a =93serious=94 citation, and dropped four
of the other serious citations. For those who want to take a closer
look, we=92ve got the original citations posted here and the settlement
document from OSHA posted here.
In the other most recent
case involving deaths at the Institute plant, OSHA in August 1996
settled a case that originally had a $1.59 million fine attached to it
for $700,000, and dropped 11 of the original 27 citations, including 10
that had been listed as =93willful=94 by OSHA
inspectors.
us_mn: Mille Lacs County Times - Chemical fire west of
Foreston
As firefighters from
Foreston, Milaca and Foley tried to put out a chemical fire, the
homeowner caused so much interference that he was finally
arrested.
On Tuesday, March 30 around 7 p.m., numerous
firefighters, sheriff=92s office deputies and troopers with the state
patrol responded to the fire at 16698 Highway 23, west of Foreston near
the Benton/Mille Lacs County border.
An automotive shop in the
garage/barn had a large amount of used motor oil, a 250 gallon diesel
fuel tank and magnesium inside. There were several explosions and
firefighters used foam through an induction system for the
magnesium.
There was also a lot of wood in and around the
building. Dave=92s Excavating was called in to help clear wood and other
material away from the building.
Sgt. Dan Holada of the
sheriff=92s office arrived on scene to learn that the owner, James
Arsene Lafore, 57, had pulled a fire hose out of one of the firefighters
hand and was in dangerous areas.
EDIT|DELETE
us_mn
home fire response illegal
us_la:
Denham Springs Chemical Fire
A
tremendous explosion inside a chemical warehouse operated by Coco
Resources in Denham Springs triggered a huge fire
Tuesday.
Efforts to bring the blaze under control were
constantly interrupted when 55 gallon drums filled with chemicals would
periodically explode into the air and then come apart like fragmentation
grenades starting more fires where ever they landed.
State
police say the warehouse was stacked from the floor to ceiling with 55
gallon drums of chemicals stacked on pallets. Fire officials made the
decision to pull back to a safe distance and wait for the fire to begin
dying down before moving in to extinguish it.
The fire
forced the evacuation of about 200 people and sent smoke so high into
the air it could be seen 20 miles off in Baton Rouge.
The cause
of the fire won't be known until it has been put out.
us_ca:
North Auburn apartment explosion believed
drug-lab-related
A
chemical explosion rocked a North Auburn apartment complex Tuesday and
investigators now say it was caused by a possible clandestine hashish
lab in a bathroom.
Four people who had been in the Auburn Court
Apartments unit where the explosion took place were taken to hospital
with burns, said Lt. Jeffrey Ausnow of the Placer County Sheriff=92s
Department.
Another man, who went into the Gateway Court apartment
to rescue a dog, suffered smoke inhalation.
Nearby
residents of the complex, located next to Rock Creek Plaza at Highway 49
and Bell Road, described the explosion as a sound similar to a car
ramming into a building.
us_ca: The King of Hazardous Waste
Marcial Aguinaldo had to manage the biological waste
coming from Prusiner=92s and other campus labs.
Aguinaldo
is Mission Bay=92s =93king of hazardous waste,=94 according to his boss,
D. Travis Clark, an environmental health & safety specialist with
the university.
With his team of seven technicians, Aguinaldo is in
charge of picking up, consolidating, and packing off radiological,
biological, and chemical waste produced by labs and medical offices at
14 UCSF facilities, including all of the Mission Bay campus. It=92s a
job that requires a deep knowledge of chemistry and biology, as well as
the flexibility to adapt to thousands of researchers and a constantly
shifting smorgasbord of chemicals.
=93I still have my ten
fingers,=94 the 51-year-old joked recently about his nearly three
decades of handling carcinogenic, radioactive, toxic, and explosive
materials.
Robert Bunsen, of Bunsen burner fame,
born today in 1811
If you
told Robert Bunsen his best known scientific contribution would be a
heating device, he probably wouldn=92t have taken you seriously. Born
today (March 30) in 1811 in Germany, Bunsen made several other
discoveries ...Three years later, he became a lecturer at the university
and began to study arsenous acid.
As you
may imagine, Bunsen=92s studies were not entirely conducive to good
health. While experimenting with cacodyl (a compound containing arsenic)
during his tenure at the University of Marburg, Bunsen nearly died of
arsenic poisoning and lost the sight in his right eye due to a
laboratory explosion. Cacodyl has a nasty tendency to spontaneously
combust when exposed to dry air.
On the
positive side, Bunsen did discover that iron oxide hydrate acted as an
antidote for arsenic poisoning. Necessity, as they say, is the mother of
invention.
