Slashdot Mirror
Rotten Office Fridge Cleanup Sends 7 To Hospital
bokske writes "An office worker cleaning a fridge full of rotten food created a smell so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital and made many others ill. Firefighters had to evacuate the AT&T building in downtown San Jose on Tuesday, after the flagrant fumes prompted someone to call 911. A hazmat team was called in. Just another day at the office."
There are quite a few molds and other items that can cause serious respiratory distress for those of us allergic to them. Fast acting too. When I got off the plane in Australia and was exposed to new pollens I my body had never experienced, I was horizontal on a gurney getting anti-histamine treatments within 30 minutes!
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order- Ed Howdershelt Via Tass
It's one thing if spores cause an infection- but going to the hospital cause you don't like a smell? I mean come on. Grow a pair, you know?
RTFA. The fridge was full of mold. Many folks are allergic to mold, especially in quantity.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
--of course I have job sites on sewer pumping stations and waste-water treatment plants.
Not only does it smell bad where I work, but it can kill you if you're not careful. People dump all sorts of things down the drain that they shouldn't. I've heard stories of entire tanker loads of gasoline getting dumped, Ether, Perc, Jet fuel, and some mysterious stuff that glowed blue coming from what used to be called the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST).
During large thunderstorms, the sewer pipes often see huge flows that scour all the grease that people dump down the drain (DON'T DUMP GREASE DOWN THE DRAIN!) in to large globs the size of beach balls. These tend to block flow at the waste-water stations and cause sewer backup until someone can get down there and pitch-fork it apart.
And Mike Rowe thinks HE does dirty jobs...
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
As a former chemist, I'm willing to smell something, but I never let anyone stick something in my face; if I'm going to smell something, it's either going to be on a flat surface, or in MY hand. Then I "waft" the scent towards my nose from a good distance with my hand, and if I still can't smell anything, then I might go closer.
Acid fumes teach you that lesson real quick.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
I think it was when they began cleaning with bleach and chased it with ammonia that did the trouble started.
For the uninitiated: http://everything2.com/title/Mixing%2520bleach%2520and%2520ammonia%2520does%2520not%2520make%2520a%2520super%2520cleaner
"Exactly why should you not mix ammonia and bleach?
In a nutshell, the combination produces corrosive substances in your airways that cause your lungs to fill with fluid. You drown.
Household bleach is usually about 5% sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl).When mixed with ammonia (NH3), mono- and di-chloramines are formed: NH2Cl and NH2Cl2. These cause respiratory tract irritation, tearing, and nausea.
Worse, these compounds decompose in water to form ammonia gas (nasty in itself) and hypochlorous acid. This last in the presence of water forms hydrochloric acid and nascent (monoatomic) oxygen, which are highly reactive and can lead to pulmonary edema and pneumonia.
There are several ways household ammonia and bleach can react. All of them are dangerous.
Reaction type 1: Ammonia directly reacts with bleach to form hydrazine (N2H4, which, in addition to being extremely poisonous, can burn even in the absence of air! It explodes on contact with rust!
2NH3 + NaOCl -----> N2H4 + NaCl + H2O
Reaction type 2: Bleach hydrolyzes into sodium hydroxide and hypochlorous acid, which in turn decompose into chlorine gas and nascent oxygen (both poisonous). The chlorine gas in turn reacts with the ammonia to form chloramines, also very poisonous.
NaOCl -----> NaOH + HOCl
HOCl ---> HCl + O (monatomic oxygen)
NaOCl + 2HCl -----> Cl2 + NaCl + H2O
2NH3 + Cl2 -------> 2NH2Cl (chloramine)
4NH3 + 2Cl2 ------> 2NHCl2 (dichloramine)
6NH3 + 3Cl2 ------> NCl3 (trichloramine or nitrogen trichloride)"
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
Has nobody else read Douglas Adams' The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul? Don't mess with the god of guild living in the fridge...
"Affected" is correct in the text provided by MyLongNickName, so the statement by Tiny1877 is at least partially correct.
Tiny1877 is also correct for general usage - when you visited the dictionary, you would have found the first few entries of "Affect" treating it as a verb, whereas the first few entries of "Effect" would have referenced usage as a noun.
Oh, maybe I should have thrown in a sensational start to this post, to increase my chance of being noticed...
You can handle it most of the time, and to a certain extent.
I spent a year working in a lab where one of my duties was preparing fluid extracts from drilled core samples of landfills for analysis. Most of the time it was just a nasty smell, and work was done under a fume hood, so it wasn't that bad.
But one or two times the core drilling had really hit jackpot; the slightest whiff out of the fume hood and breakfast was coming up. None of the usual 'eww, ick, blech, that really stinks', just the sensation of something hitting the olfactory sense followed by immediate backwards rerun of the last meal, then wondering what the hell just happened. And then continuing further work without breathing through the nose (or, preferably, breathing elsewhere in the room and holding my breath while working with the samples).
Of course, as I knew pretty much what I was working with and knew there was no significant exposure anyway there was no need to seek medical attention. But if they managed to strike similar gold in the realm of olfactory adventures, I can certainly understand that they may be a bit shaken. In combination with an uncertainty about the cleaning chemicals a visit to the doctor might not be entirely uncalled for.
With some nauseating fumes toughing it out simply isn't an option, they trigger some form of autonomous immediate purge signal. Considering the number of vomiting agents that have been developed as non-lethal weapons, it's not that surprising if random decomposition biochemistry happens to brew us one of its own every now and then.