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."

Comments

Chemistry lab

[stillnotelf]

I've worked in a chemistry lab that shared space with a lab using some really noxious amine compounds (cadaverine is named that way for a reason...). Mostly they weren't hospital-toxic, just nasty. Whenever they had to open their fridge we cleared out of the room for 10 minutes to let the fumes dissipate up the venting hoods.

Re:Chemistry lab

[smellsofbikes]

Be glad you weren't working next to an intense lachrymator like some of the ethyne derivatives. It's amazing to watch someone open a container in a fume hood and within ten seconds everyone in the lab is running for the door with tears streaming down their faces (and retching.)

A terminal diamine only one carbon off cadaverine is named putrescine. It's also pretty nasty. Even purified butyric acid is astoundingly horrible stuff: years later, even a whiff of slightly rancid butter (from which name butyric acid derives) makes my stomach turn.

Re:Chemistry lab

[innocent_white_lamb]

A highway traffic patrol officer I used to know had an accident at his weigh scale station once. A shelf containing toilet bowl cleaner and a bottle of bleach fell off of the wall behind the toilet and broke. He had to crawl out of the station on his hands and knees. Afterward he showed me his cap badge which had corroded where it was hanging on a coat hook. They had to replace most of the electronics in the scale after that.

Moral: Never put bleach and toilet bowl cleaner on the same shelf.

Re:Paaaleeese

[LocutusMIT]

That's really interesting. I have the opposite reaction— my immune system doesn't recognise new pollens until I've been exposed to them for about a year. Living abroad was heaven.

Re:The main rule

[mmkkbb]

I worked for a company that built label printers. They conveniently placed an automatic label printer at every fridge. You pressed a button, and a label would print out with an expiration date. Anything past expiration or without a label was tossed daily.

Re:Paaaleeese

[innocent_white_lamb]

The worst smell I've ever encountered: In a former life, I used to be a sheriff. One day I went to impound an old station wagon -- I could smell it from many feet away. I broke a window on the side of the car with the intent of seeing what's what, and immediately vomited on the street and ran away as fast as I could. I called the fire department to come with their Scott air packs to hook up the car and tow it to furthest back corner of the impound yard. After getting it to the impound yard, we examined it and discovered a liquified goo in a couple of large garbage bags in the back of the station wagon. The goo also contained small bones. We sampled it and sent the goo to the crime lab, thinking that it was parts of a rotted-away body. It turned out to be the remains of a large dog.

Nobody could go near that car without breathing apparatus. The smell apparently wouldn't kill you (I'm still here) but it sure did make me sick.

Re:true story from my brothers office

[Just Some Guy]

I had a similar experience when one of my kids unplugged the deep freeze where we'd stored a quarter hog that we'd gotten as a present, and no one noticed for about 6 months. One day I wondered why there were so many flies around the back of the garage, opened the deep freeze, and instantly puked. It wasn't a matter of "being tough" or "strong stomached"; something raced from my olfactory nerves to the ancient, reptilian part of my brain which immediately issued the "purge upper GI tract" interrupt.

It was horrible. I ended up painting my nose and upper lip with Vick's Vapor Rub, tying two bandanas and a sweatshirt around my face, and shoveling out the re-frozen pigslush with a snowshovel. Neighbors from down the block were coming outside to find the cause of the stench.