Posted By Martin Monaghan
Just seen a story on local TV news.
A woman in Pately Bridge called emergency services after she dropped a mercury thermometer in her kitchen. Fire brigade and paramedics attended the scene and the family has been moved into temporary accommodation whilst the kitchen is decontaminated. Pictures showed kitchen units being dismantled and removed. the cost so far is £5000.
At the end of the article the woman asked "if they are so dangerous why can I buy them at the local shop for £1-99?"
I know mercury is toxic but I don't know enough to say that the reaction was OTT.
How many workplaces have mercury thermometers and if they do are there adequate emergency procedures in place in case of an accident? Will evacuation be part of the procedure?

Martin M.

Posted By Martin Monaghan
I remember breaking a thermometer in the chemistry lab at school, and I didn't think it had any effect on me. 30 odd years later though a lot of my colleagues think I'm as mad as a hatter.

Posted By Neville
Perhaps her kitchen units had aluminium in them! Who knows? A bit OTT I suspect, unless you are raking in the money for the clean up.
Aluminium spillages in aircraft kitchens (galley), now thats a different kettle of fish!

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Maybe she has a Landlord who knows that the house will be blacklisted if it is not cleaned up in a public manner!

Bob

Posted By Debbie S
This story was on GMTV this morning - its going to cost in the region of £10,000 for the clean up and cost of replacing furniture - a chemist was called in and he told them their pine dining room table and chairs had to be destroyed.It was dismantled and plaed in sealed bags and siposed of as toxic waste. The family (who haven't been near the house for 4 days)cannot re-enter the house until the chemist has given the all clear.

What a waste of money and a very extreme OTT reaction. I cringed as I watched the story and once again thought about changing professions as I do not want to be categorised as a completley OTT H&S professional

Posted By Andy Petrie
PS - I hope she has contents insurance

(although saying that the insurance company would have good grounds for not paying up on this one)

Posted By Merv Newman
Someone should check their facts and then sue that chemist. I'm out of the office (caen in normandie) so I can't look them up. By memory, The surface tension/evaporation rate of liquid mercury is such that it can give rise to an atmospheric concentration above the 8-hr TLV, depending on the environment. Did anyone actually check/calculate the exposure to the involved family ?

What environmental/occupational health qualifications did that idiot have ? Where did he/she come from ?

Posted By Brian McMillan
Have to say that, prior to taking a sideways move to avoid being branded as what others have suspected we will eventually be branded as, I became aware of a local education establishment that dialled 999 when a similar incident occured.

By the time I got to the site there were fire and police vehicles everywhere and all the staff were walking around in disposable paper suits having had their own clothes taken away for decontamination/ destruction.

The building was cleaned from top to bottom using a specialist cleaning company and most of the building contents were either destroyed or sent for similar specialist cleaning operations. All carpets were destroyed.

The common factor would seem to be the emergency services. Once the call came in the incident was treated as a major incident and acted upon accordingly. Total control was assumed by the emergency services although the bill was ultimately met by the Council tax payer.

I do not know what the ultimate answer is but until such time as education of the masses, with particular emphasis on the first responders, ensures a proportionate response to incidents headlines like this will be all too worryingly common place.

Posted By Frank Hallett
Happy Wednesday to all.

As an ex-Fire Service Fire Survival & Decontam [HAZMAT for our North American brethren] Instructor with a total of 24yrs at Stations and as a Trainer in the busiest parts of south Essex; perhaps I could provide some background info for responders to this post to consider. It should be unsderstood that I am only relating to my past experience, although I suspect that little of substance has changed in the intervening time; except for suspected terrrorist incidents.

Also, I am not trying to defend or refute any aspect of the reported incident - I am trying to present an impartial & unbiased informative posting.

As an OiC of appliances attending incidents that involved suspected hazardous substances, I was bound by the Brigade rules; the principal ones being to check what potentially uncontrolled substances may be present at the incident without exposing personnel unnecessarily; to relay that information to Control who would then pass that info to the Brigade Chemical Expert [not a direct FS employee] who would then respond with [hopefully] appropriate advice. I was not allowed to initiate any actions on my own initiative unless I perceived an immediate and over-riding life risk - and I was still required not to place those under my control in harms way [these procedures are a book - and not a slim one either].

If it was perceived sufficiently dangerous, the Chemist would either liaise directly with the incident commander or even attend in person.

Firefighters get a considerable grounding and training in recognising & collecting the evidence of hazardous substances and extensive training in how to interact with those substances. Because of the limited space availability on fire engines, and the need to provide the minimum amount of ability to select the wrong level of protection, this inevitably leads to what could very easily be seen with hindsight as an OTT response in many cases. It should be borne in mind that there really is still only an extremely limited range of PPE & RPE immediately available to the first responders; and they are always the ones who really do need the highest level of protection.

The Incident Commander would be advised by the Chemist and then deal with the incident accordingly. In the reported case, there is probably rather more than has so far been reported publicly and I will reserve my opinion as to appropriate the reported actions.

In response to some other responses on this thread; as an OiC at RTA's on even relatively minor roads - which may also involve hazardous substances; I have been present when firefighters have been put at unacceptable risk from passing traffic; and I still have a very clear vision of a colleague being pulled into the slipstream of a passing artic on the A127 at about 20:00hrs one night in the mid-seventies whilst working to extricate the occupants of a crashed car; and then being pulled by that slipstream some 80yds along the road - he broke lots of things in his body before coming to a stop in the centere of the outer lane.

Since that time, I adopted a procedure of simply closing the road that was being worked on with FS vehicles as other provided barriers were not perceived as being effective. From the FS perspective, having ensured the safest possible working environment, it was then the exclusive responsibility of the Police to effectively manage the ensuing traffic issues. the Fire & Rescue Services Act 2004 [replaced the Fire Services Act 1947 & etc] now ratifies that approach and makes the responsibilities explicit.

My apologies for such a lengthy posting; but it never hurts to provide a means for people to have a greater understanding of the underlying reasons or assumptions for doing things.

Frank Hallett

Posted By Robert K Lewis
Perhaps every mercury thermometer should be supplied with some aluminium foil and a 2 page spill control sheet and an MDS so that we could avoid such situations!!! Ouch bit the wretched tongue and cheek again.

Other alternative is to swop to alcohol thermometers, banning mercury altogether, then when the child bites it and swallows the alcohol we can limit the chaos to a single hospital cubicle and person.

Obviously the dynamic risk assessment aspect of FS training has not reached sufficient state of cultural change so that it can evaluate all situations in the light of circumstances. Perhaps this is even a case of over-training whereby individual officers perceive dynamic assessment as only suitable for major incidents - or is it that the rules are so written as to proscribe the use of intellectual judgement.

Dynamic assessment to be truly effective has to be used at the time of performing ALL tasks, minor or major, in order to bring the person into the assessment process and ownership of their own actions.

Bob

Posted By Steve Buxton
I know this has gone a bit off topic, but there are regular criticisms of the police for closing roads for too long after a major RTA, but it must be remembered that it is a potential crime scene.

If a person has died, or is considered likely to die, or has serious injuries, the same investigation will go on as if it was a murder scene.

You cannot preserve or find evidence with traffic driving over or near the scene. A finger tip search may be necessary to identify minute markings on the road, or to find a small piece of a vehicle that may have come lose or caused the incident.

It is not unknown for vehicles to be used as weapons, so the police must assume the worst until all avenues have been investiagted.

I get frustrated like you, but I am sure I would want a proper investigation if one of my loved ones was involved.

Would you object to a factory being closed down whilst a HSE Inspector thoroughly investigated a death or serious injury ?

Posted By T Phillips
I have just had to pick up my operational fire fighting colleagues from the floor (after having carried out the relevant risk assesment of course) after retelling this tale. Obviously over zealous - glad it wasn't in my brigade...!!!

Could this be an urban legend though? I have searched high and low, including the BBC local news, and can find no mention of it. Not a sausage - even in local news sites. Just curious, as I would like more details in case we get called to a similar incident.

Posted By ian milne
Ah, yes, that wonderful silvery stuff. From the waste disposal point of view, we have in the pass, recommended to people to wear a mercury filtered facemask (ABEK1-Hg from memory) and waterproof clothing and gloves.

Based on the extremely short exposure time in cleaning the stuff up, mercury can be collecetd in blotting paper or at least moved to a suitable absorbent rag. This can then be put into a suitable glass container with thermometer for labelling and disposal by the authorities.

From experience, how many knowledgable and untrained people dispose of these wonderful devices via their municipal waste collections, hidden in the 'bins'. If soneone can confirm by checking environmental sites on the web, i remember from memory, that a amount of thermometer mercury can pollute and contaminate a loch (sorry 'lake/pond' of water)which would only affect the fish (being poached), plantlife, domestic drinking supply if drawn from it.

Anyway, now that the incident has passed, would the general public of learned from the incident based on how the article would of been accurately and objectively been printed by the media.

Right, back to earning some serious money now!

Ian