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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."
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?
Bring on the comments about how so-and-so knows somebody's grandma that was so affected by smell xyz that something bad happened. Big whoop. Unless it's literally chemicals that are affecting your health, or an airborne pathogen, you don't need medical attention.
And please, just because you don't have a sense of smell, doesn't mean you're immune to pathogens.
So much wrong.. must resist reference to idle section... oops too late!
Belief? Hope? Preference?The Existential Vortex
Toys in the Attic: "So what was the real lesson? Don't leave things in the fridge."
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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.
Did they find Indy inside?
If you can't tell what something is through the plastic wrapper due to strange color or texture, then don't open it! Nothing good ever came out of one of these packages.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
vegimite..... just smelling that is good enough to go to the hospital.
:P
just smelling it killed my apetite for a month.
new Zealanders eat it like as if it were creamcheese
could have been vegimite
Note that if you read the sentence carefully, there is nothing that said the fridge itself was the cause of the odor!
"AN OFFICE WORKER cleaning a fridge full of rotten food CREATED A SMELL so noxious that it sent seven co-workers to the hospital..."
I'm pretty sure every office has one of those guys...
--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!
My brother used to work in an office that was (badly) converted from an old bakery about 10 years previously. There was the usual large store/junk room around the back where stuff was just piled up until they ran out of room. Eventually they had to clear it out. Right at the back of the room buried under a huge pile of stuff was quite a large chest freezer. It wasn't turned on but it was locked shut.
They tried to shift it but it was too heavy and obviously full. This should have rung a few alarm bells but no. They busted the lock open with a crow bar and opened it up. Projectile vomiting all round the moment the lid was opened. 3 people taken to hospital. It required a very specialised hazmat / cleaning team to sort it out in the long term as it turned out the freezer had been used to store raw meat for pies and pasties and that meat had been in there for about 11 years or so. Did I mention the room got very hot in the summer...
another Roadkill on the Information Superhighway
"Throwed up all over monitor."
Thanks.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I figured I would have been a Dirk Gently comment in here at some point. Something about a lurking refrigerator springing forth a Guilt God...
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
As Carlin used to say, "Could be steak, could be cake!"
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
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...
When I was in college, someone left a fridge on the third floor of the fraternity house with leftover pizza, a watermelon, and about a quart of turkey chili in it over the summer. Someone else, possessed by his own moral righteousness, or because he was a dick, unplugged it. About three weeks later, we had a plague of flies. I found the fridge in a pool of black spooge with maggots in the carpet.
On discovering the fridge would fit through the window, I chained the ol' Jeep to the dumpster and drug it under the window. We then shoved the fridge, on it's back, out the window.
And missed the dumpster
The fridge struck an electrical box on the outside wall, and flipped, which caused it to hit the side of the dumpster, burst open, and land in our parking lot.
Nobody went to the hospital, but it took days to get the smell off our hands.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
So here you are working in an office building, when you start to smell a terrible stench of decay and harsh chemicals. You have no idea what caused this smell. You then proceed to vomit due to the smell, but you don't know that it is only because of the smell. What would you do?
You got marked troll because you demonstrated not only an inability to put yourself into someone else's shoes, but a smug sense of superiority over those people that you can't empathize with. And then you had the gracelessness to whine about getting marked troll. Paaaleeeese.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton