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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."
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.
It wasn't really the smell per se, it was the mixture of rotting food and harsh cleaning chemicals that caused a lot of the people to vomit. The warning labels on those things are pretty lengthy.
Monstar L
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
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
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.
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.
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
Untrue. The article explicitly states that the person cleaning the fridge was not affected (effected?) due to allergies which prevent her from smelling. Allergies do not give you superhuman resistance to chlorine gas.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
In deadly Australia, even the plants are out to get you.
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"
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.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
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!
"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...
The fungus took my baby!
Are you just posting cause you feel like it. Because if you had the slightest clue as to what you were talking about you would not have posted that. Chlorine gas is deadly. Not deadly if you are allergic to it or deadly if you are a puss. DEADLY. Used as a weapon in war. Deadly.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Perhaps you don't understand the nature of vomiting issue. "Bucking up" because it's a "bad smell" is not always possible. Good for you if you're an internet tough guy who never vomits unless he chooses to. The rest of the population sometimes simply doesn't have a choice in the matter. The vomit reflex in response to smell is NOT a voluntary response. While it sometimes can be limited via voluntary effort, this is not always the case.
It is human nature to vomit at the smell of noxious fumes (that's why they are called noxious); this is a biological trait that has evolved as a survival response to eating tainted food.
I don't know if you've ever had a bout of violent vomiting that lasted several minutes. Pulled rib muscles, capillary damage resulting in bleeding from nasal passages and the eyes, esophageal bleeding... a couple of these items require medical examination. When I was an EMT, we had a guy who was throwing up due to overeating and not chewing his food properly, and he had a heart attack, likely from the increase in blood pressure/pulse rate while vomiting. He had no idea he was having a heart attack, he thought he just had painful vomiting.
If there is an unknown risk (which is quite possible), seeking medical evaluation is important. Both for liability reasons (you KNOW the employer needs to cover their ass) and for humane reasons. What if there was a bigger issue, such as toxins? Are you medically qualified to rule that out? Do you think anyone in that office was?
And I'll give you a little hint about office morale... having several employees puking their guts out is a bad idea. Sending them directly home is callous. Making sure they are OK is the right thing to do, and medical evaluation is the right way to do it.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Effect = Noun
Not always!
"Barack Obama sought the office of President of the United States of America because of his deep desire to effect change in Washington."
Grammatically correct, yet factually wrong. He wanted to "effect change" in his wallet. And in his KFC bucket.
Oops, too soon? Sorry.