2 Feb 78-the City of Chester, just below Philadelphia, opened its first city-owned career fire station. At 1544, an alarm was sounded for an old tire recycling plant only a few blocks away. What firefighters didn’t know was that the building contained much more than tires-thousands of 55 gallon drums filled with chemicals and toxic waste, that site now being referred to as the Wade Dump. Many of the first responders have since become afflicted with disease, and others have died. The Philadelphia Inquirer did a series of articles on the incident in 2000.
Not too many years later, the volunteer fire company of which I was a member responded to a structure fire. It was an ordinary incident-a room and contents fire with extension into the attic, except for odd flame colors, odd runoff colors, and fire behavior inconsistent with standard construction. The homeowner arrived while the operation was well involved and advised police that he was a retired exterminator, and the attic was loaded with old liquid, dry, and other pesticides.
Were it not for being enrolled in a hazardous materials class that day, Jack and I would have likely been there-we were among startup members of the county hazmat team. When I last talked to my former Chief, he said that many of the guys on that incident have come down with cancers and other illness.
First responders are now aware beforehand of hazards in commercial occupancies most of the time. The same can’t be said for residences. Many communities have hazmat disposal days which are free of charge. Please take advantage of them for your own household and those of elderly relatives.
Wow. I never realized that fire fighters faced these dangers - I thought the risk of burning was bad enough. Are the illnesses caused because of contact or through inhalation? Is it actally even legal to have all of those chemicals in your home?
Funny you should bring this up. I was just looking in my back yard the other day. The people who lived here before us (they’d built the place and lived here 29 years) left behind cans of, um, I dunno. There are 2 that look like driveway sealer, but the driveway is concrete, so I don’t know what it’s for. There are several, including Thompson’s Water Seal 5-gallon cans with duct tape labels indicating they held gasoline. :eek: And there are 2 or 3 others that say they hold “oil” but I don’t know what kind or kinds.
How do you recycle or dispose of something when you can’t be sure exactly what it is?
Thankfully, none of these cans are near the house, and we’ve got an open trailer, so taking them somewhere for disposal should be easy. I’m just not sure where to take them. I should probably call the county.
And the worst we have in the house are some solvents and lubricants in my husband’s basement workshop. Nothing too funky, I don’t think.
In the US, unless your state has chosen to regulate more strictly, in general residents are fairly unregulated as to the chemicals they can have as well as how they can be disposed. Most materials that industry must comply with strict regulations regarding the storage and disposal of (manage as hazardous waste), residents may perfectly legally store at home forever and throw away in their regular trash. This causes problems not only for firefighters, but for sanitation workers - crushed containers of different chemicals in the back of a trash truck can cause some nasty mixtures that cause very nasty things to happen. Pool chemicals caused a trash truck fire in a town not far from here, and I remember a story of a man killed when a bottle of hydrofluoric acid was compacted in his trash truck, and he got it full in the face.
Why is it legal? One reason is that enforcing regulations against it would be truly beyond comprehension. I work for my state’s environmental agency, and our inspectors can’t even inspect all of the regulated industrial generators that they know about, let alone ones they don’t know about (haven’t registered with the state.) Adding millions of households to that inspection list would not accomplish anything, other than having more laws that are not enforced. Some trash haulers won’t accept hazardous waste from households, but realistically most of what goes in the trash won’t be found.
I used to manage a household hazardous waste program, and I was truly frightened by some of the things that people brought in. Retired exterminators, retired pharmacists, retired scientists and lab workers - why these people thought “hey, I should take some of this home” is beyond me. The item that scared me the most was the 5-gallon bucket of carbide that came in on a rainy day …
To find a houshold hazardous waste (HHW) program near you, call your county administration office or your state environmental agency. Until you can safely dispose of your HHW, make sure it is stored out of the weather in containers that are not leaking. Your HHW program should be able to take unknowns, because either they or their disposal company will have a chemist on staff who will be able to classify the material for proper disposal.
Your advice about properly disposing of chemicals and hazardous materials is good, wise, and we should all pay attention and follow it. Please do not think I am criticizing you for bringing this topic to our attention.
However, to tell a story about a single incident that happened to adults 30 years ago and say “they died” or “they became sick” is strongly implying that the incident caused the deaths or sickness. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. Do you have any independent evidence of cause and effect other than a colorful and scary story?
Many people become sick, acquire cancer and die over 30 years. It would be uncommon for any random group NOT to have sickness and death in that time period. How did the first responders group compare with others of their age and occupation?
I have a toaster in my kitchen. If I get leukemia, did the toaster cause it? Your evidence does not prove cause, it just scares people.
Products enter the body through the mucosa, by absorption through the skin, inhalation, and ingestion. Many products listed in the NIOSH pocket guide to chemical hazards enter the body via multiple routes.
Legality is a different beast. Hazmat laws tend to be focused on product used in commerce, and in reportable quantities. The retired exterminator didn’t have 55 gallon drums-instead it was a box of this powder, a box of that, a case of such and such aerosol, a carboy of liquid pesticide, and so forth. He probably wasn’t breaking any law, but combine his collection with fire and water, and it becomes a toxic mess.
Understood, that correlation does not prove causation. The reader of the Inquirer series is free to draw their own conclusions and believe or disbelieve the data presented.