Manhole Covers Go 'Boom'
The Brian Lehrer Show, 3/9/2015.

Manhole Explosion Season. 2011 NYC manhole fires occurred in 2014. 100 already occurred this year.

The hazards of urban life. All the salt getting into our manholes will continue to corrode the wires down there, say the experts, and that's set to cause fires throughout the summer. Here's the science behind it.

Francisco de Leon, associate professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering, and Michael Clendenin, the director of media relations at Con Edison, discuss ...why the number spikes in the winter and how to stay safe as you walk by those ubiquitous manhole covers. 

Did you know...? MERCAPTAN.   

Natural gas and propane are colorless and odorless. The March 18, 1937 Texas School Explosion led to the law requiring Mercaptan to be added to natural gas as a warning odor.  

Other recommendations of the 1937 Court of Inquiry still needed in most schools:

1) technically trained administrators for modern school systems,

2) regular inspections and more widespread public education about managing hazards,

3) a comprehensive, rational safety code.

You can prevent explosions in your school.

Study finds 5,893 natural gas leaks in Washington, D.C. January 16, 2014  Phys.org 

Louisville's Carbide Industries ignored warnings, safety board says. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board Thursday night voted 3-0 to accept a report that put the blame of two Rubbertown workers’ deaths on a company culture that ignored repeated problems with a furnace until it was too late to fix them. Louisville Courier-Journal, Kentucky. http://cjky.it/WH2XTI

Five Years After Sugar Refinery Explosion, Work Remains to Prevent Such Tragedies  Five years ago this week the Port Wentworth, Georgia community was shaken by the catastrophic sugar dust explosions and fires at the Imperial Sugar Refinery. The blasts, ignited by combustible industrial dust, took the lives of 14 workers and injured dozens more, many severely. It was tragic -- and preventable. This anniversary is a somber reminder that there is much left to do to prevent industrial dust explosions.

Safe Schools. Pipeline Preparedness.

Approximately one in every 20 schools is located within a half-mile of a transmission pipeline or above ground pipeline facility.

The Pipeline Association for Public Awareness helps schools improve safety planning and readiness through sponsorship of the School Pipeline Safety Partnership. http://www.pipelineawareness.org/schools/

Learn more:

• Visit the School Pipeline Safety Partnership Web site for school safety resources and to learn more about the program.
• Schools participating in the Partnership’s program can now view school-specific information by accessing their dashboard page.  Find your school’s page.
• Download school program brochure

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Remembering a chlorine derailment, puresafety.com, Dr. Scott Harris

It doesn’t seem like eight years since I had a major run-in with a railcar of “skull and crossbones” material, but today was the day.  At that time I was a Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC) with the U.S. EPA in Dallas, TX.  FOSCs are the lead for agency responses to oil and hazardous substance releases and have full authority to direct all public and private resources to stop or prevent a release.

Read more...

Go to the EPA website for a close-up look at this unique event.  I also highly recommend the lessons learned report prepared for the National Response Team.
–
UL PureSafety’s software and information solutions empower employees to improve workforce health and safety.

 

Rafael Moure-Eraso: It's time for government and industry to adopt inherently safer technology

"it is time for the EPA and other regulators to give this proposal another serious look and make IST a cornerstone of its accident prevention programs. It is time for industry to welcome the principles of IST -- substitute, minimize, moderate, and simplify -- and effect the changes needed to make chemical plants inherently safer." -- CSB Chair Rafael Moure-Eraso 6-24-12 Op Ed Charleston Gazette

http://wvgazette.com/Opinion/OpEdCommentaries/201206230057#.T-daKEo6HrE.facebook

IT'S TIME TO GET SMART about chemical management. Too many schools, old and new, harbor large quantities of explosives, flammables and other hazardous chemicals in labs, closets, classrooms and storerooms.

TAKE ACTION to improve your school's chemical security. 

START CONVERSATIONS* to raise awareness of resources that can save your school money and help your school prevent explosions and fires – from accidents and intentional acts.

IDENTIFY AND ELIMINATE HAZARDS before there is an accident and people get hurt.

REACH OUT to school officials, other parents, your local health department, fire department, and state agencies who are responsible for helping schools manage and dispose of chemical hazards.

PREVENT EXPLOSIONS. Ask your principal these questions:

1. Does my school have a chemical inventory?
2. Does my school have a comprehensive chemical management plan?
3. Does my school have a chemical hygiene officer?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no," your school needs an immediate checkup and safety drill.


*Bring the Lessons of the 1937 Texas School Explosion to Your School

Send comments and questions to me at healthykids@rcn.com

The aftermath of a school explosion

January 13, 2012  Science room mishap prompts HAZMAT response at David Douglas High

August 12, 1985 Science Class...

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close:

The aftermath of a school explosion

NYTIMES Magazine, February 27, 2005. "The Rescue Artist," by Deborah Solomon. Below is an excerpt from an article about Jonathan Safran Foer, Author of Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 

… "Astoundingly, he insists that his development as a writer was shaped less by his parents and by his genetic endowments, less even by the novelists and poets he loves, than by a single event: the Explosion, as he calls it. ...

[His email] began: “Firstly, let me say that these are, quite literally, the first words I’ve ever written about this. Ever.  Literally not a single world.” Foer told me later that he had composed the message at home, at the desk in his cluttered basement workshop, his thin face streaked with tears. The letter recounted, in some detail, the event that split the idyll of his childhood in two: the years before Aug. 12, 1985, and the years after.

That bright Monday morning began innocently enough. Foer, a boy of 8, was attending a summer program at Murch Elementary, a pubic school not far from his home. The first lesson of the day was a chemistry project, and in an act of  nearly unbelievable carelessness, the teacher laid out bowls of combustible materials.  The goal was to make sparklers...

Read more: The aftermath of a school explosion

Includes The Washington Post article: $11 Million Awarded for Boy Burned in School Lab

Nathan Phillips is a meter-reader for the 21st century.

The College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of geography and environment recently piled into a Nissan Murano with collaborators Bob Ackley and Eric Crosson and rambled through the streets of greater Boston to hunt for natural gas leaks. With the help of a strange-looking vacuum device attached to the car just below the rear bumper, the three have found geysers of gas gushing invisibly from underground pipes corroded by age. The leaks, Phillips says, contribute to global warming, could create explosions in some extreme cases, have killed or damaged up to 10,000 trees in Massachusetts (a disputed matter under litigation), and shaft rate-paying gas customers who must pick up the tab for wasted gas.

Much more 

'Model workplaces' not always so safe  www.iwatchnews.org Workers at plants billed as the nation’s safest - and thus exempt from some inspections - are dying in preventable accidents: explosions, chemical releases, crane accidents and machinery-related crushing and asphyxiation.

EG: Is a culture of silence reinforced when government authorities and employers cooperate to paint an overly rosy picture of conditions and attitudes that, in reality, put people at risk? 

 

This Week In Natural Gas Leaks and Explosions — June 6, 2011 - Natural Gas Watch.org

Workplace and Environmental Health and Safety Films

2011 Healthy Schools Hero Dr. Dwight Peavey

Every year, to mark the anniversary of the March 18, 1937 Texas School Explosion, I salute a Healthy Schools Hero whose extraordinary responsibility and inspirational leadership is dedicated to eliminating explosives and other chemical hazards and unhealthy conditions in schools.  

The March 18 Healthy Schools Hero Award is an annual call to tell the story of the worst school disaster in American history as a case study and cautionary tale.  By example, each Hero is an inspiration to break the silence about school hazards and bring the Lessons of the 1937 Texas School Explosion to today’s schools.  

The 1937 story needs telling because the decision-making and false economies that led to the 1937 explosion are too common in schools today.  We have widespread school design, building and operations problems, warnings are unheeded, no one takes responsible for safety, and explosives and other hazardous materials and unhealthy conditions in labs, classrooms, closets and storerooms are routinely ignored.  

The 1937 explosion resulted in a law that required adding a warning odor to natural gas thus saving millions of lives all over the world.  However, other important recommendations of the 1937 Court of Inquiry have yet to be used so that schools are teaching safely and teaching safety to students in 21st century schools.    

Meet the 2011 Healthy Schools Hero 
Dr. Dwight Peavey

Save the Gummy Bears, Save the World

Amy Cannon writes: I recently received an e-mail with a link to an article that had the title “Chemistry class explosion injures seven.” I was hesitant to open it, worried about what disaster I would find inside, but did anyway. The article was about a local chemistry teacher who was demonstrating a reaction between potassium chlorate and “food” when the reaction went “awry” and exploded upon her and seven students. Luckily there were no life threatening injuries, just minor cuts and burns. But, despite these “minor injuries”, my mind still went to that classroom on that day...read more

Amy Cannon, is Co-Founder and Executive Director of Beyond Benign, a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable science in order to create an environmentally, socially and economically prosperous world. http://www.beyondbenign.org

Bring the Science of Chemical Safety to Your School

Webcasts, podcasts, white papers, case studies, data sheets and more in the new SchoolDude Resource Library! 
http://www.schooldude.com/resources/

• Chemical Inventory Control and Storage Essentials for a Safe Educational Environment, 1/22/2012 Hosted by Roger Young, featuring Dave Waddell (North American Hazardous Materials Management Association) and Dr. Irene Cesa (Flinn Scientific Incorporated), this webcast examines best practices for chemical storage, inventory and disposal.

• Identify and Control Chemical Safety Risks Roger Young, featuring Dave Waddell from the North American Hazardous Materials Management Association, Joanie Arrott from TASB and Dale Zabel from School District of Kettle Moraine, WI