Emergency Response to a Mercury spill at a high school I was involved in this weekend

Hugh R · 09:19 PM

I got called by a consulting firm I occasionally work with on Saturday night (really late). They desperately wanted me to fly to Phoenix on Sunday morning to help them respond to a mercury spill at a high school there. They know I have a lot of experience in unique emergency response. I'm full time employed by one of the studios in Hollywood (my boss is a mouse). I had Monday off for President's Day, so I said OK.

What happened is some high school students were in class in a chem lab and found a really old bottle of elemental mercury (about 3 pounds in a 100 ml glass bottle). They started playing with it, and then took the bottle from the lab to the boys locker rooms and started chucking the stuff down on the floor where the gym lockers were located, having great fun. They then divided it up into a few soda bottles and a few of the boys went to other classes to show their friends their new "toy". The stuff got spread around a 65 acre campus by 1,700 students. We and the US
EPA dogged down the stuff on campus and recalled all the students to turn in their clothes and shoes for testing. We also are decontaminating the houses of four of the boys who had the stuff. The US EPA and my old client responded, and I worked 16-17 hour days the last three days on the cleanup. I think I'll take the money and buy a big screen TV with the surround sound!

I had to leave today for hard appointments tomorrow. I took a vacation day today from the mousehouse.

The cleanup will probably be completed tomorrow with re-occupancy of the school Thursday. You can read about it here, sorry, I forgot my camera http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/02/17/20090217abrk-contaminationupdate.html

Anyway,

KevinP73 · 02-17-2009, 08:55 PM

Times have changed since my high schoo days. We used to play with that stuff in chemistry class and never once had HazMat show up.

slodave · slodave's Garage

Or the good 'ol days of the anal thermometer that contained mercury.

89911 · 02-17-2009, 09:09 PM

My dad (who was a biochemist) use to have bottles of this stuff. We would actually pour it out and mess around with it like any other 10 year old kids would do. I'm not condoning it for anything, but I really believe the regulations going on now are overboard. Hey, and I am "mostly" alright.

KevinP73 · 02-17-2009, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slodave

Or the good 'ol days of the anal thermometer that contained mercury.

very disturbing.............

fingpilot · 02-17-2009, 09:13 PM

My dad was a dentist, and we too played with the stuff all the time.

I have always said I have no idea how guys our age ever survived growing up in the 60's and 70's.

KevinP73 · 02-17-2009, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fingpilot

I have always said I have no idea how guys our age ever survived growing up in the 60's and 70's.

My thoughts exactly. Steel dashboards and seat belts optional, owned too many mini bikes to count but never owned a helmet. glow in the dark finger paints........and on and on

slodave · slodave's Garage

Quote:

Originally Posted by KevinP73

very disturbing.............

Heh, I try.

fingpilot · 02-17-2009, 09:41 PM

The thought of Kevin's glow-in-the-dark-finger and an anal thermometer in the same thread, hell, in the same page.... disturbs me.

Rick Lee · Rick Lee's Garage

Hugh, let me know next time you're in town.

MotoSook · 04:14 AM

Hugh...can you explain the recovery process? I'm curriour how the mercury is recaptured once you know the area it was dispersed.

I played with the stuff as a kid too, we never vaporized it or swallowed it. Skin contact was minimal and we never dipped our hats in it.

cgarr · cgarr's Garage

.ereh stceffe edis on ,dik a sa ti htiw deyalp I

Jim Richards · 02-18-2009, 05:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fingpilot

i have always said i have no idea how guys our age ever survived growing up in the 60's and 70's.

+1

74-911 · 02-18-2009, 05:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cgarr

.ereh stceffe edis on ,dik a sa ti htiw deyalp I

I know exactly what you mean. In the 50's we used to ride our bikes through the clouds of DDT when the mosquito spraying truck was making it's rounds. Also used to coat dimes with mercury as it main them all shiny and slick.

Tim Hancock · 02-18-2009, 05:18 AM

We played with that stuff as kids also. Broke open a bunch of thermometers dad brought home from work.

RoninLB · 02-18-2009, 05:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 74-911

. Also used to coat dimes with mercury as it main them all shiny and slick.

same here

plenty of kids did it in class while hiding from the teacher

RoninLB · 02-18-2009, 05:40 AM

anybody know or guess what would happen if the "man" knew you had 10# of mercury?

Tishabet · 02-18-2009, 08:10 AM

When my Grandfather passed away about 4 years ago, we decided to move my Grandmother in with my parents and sell the grandparents' house.
Their basement was always filled with all sorts of cool stuff (my Grandfather owned and operated a dirt racetrack in the 40's and 50's, and owned an operated a gas station for about 45 years) and I was helping my parents go through it all. In the corner there was a large tin (bit bigger than a detergent bucket) that had once held lard. Inside the bin were two pairs of new, unworn WWII era combat boots and a vessel containing about two gallons of mercury.
We asked my grandmother if she had known about the mercury, and she said that my grandfather had bought it in the 40's as "dental grade mercury" and thought it would appreciate over time.
We did some research and found that most of the companies we called were going to charge us significant amounts of money to take it away... some investment

So instead we just dumped it into the stream running behind their house and called it a day.

Nah, I'm just kidding. We eventually found a company that would take it away for free.

89911 · 02-18-2009, 08:13 AM

You are much more in danger of mercury exposure if you eat alot of fish, mostly larger (tuna, swordfish) varieties. Without going into a lot of detail, the type of mercury in fish is much more dangerous in the way it can be accumulated in the body then mercury that comes out of thermometer or such. I hear a lot of this from patients and amalgam fillings. They should be more worried about Sushi.

Pazuzu · 02-18-2009, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tishabet

When my Grandfather passed away about 4 years ago, we decided to move my Grandmother in with my parents and sell the grandparents' house.
Their basement was always filled with all sorts of cool stuff (my Grandfather owned and operated a dirt racetrack in the 40's and 50's, and owned an operated a gas station for about 45 years) and I was helping my parents go through it all. In the corner there was a large tin (bit bigger than a detergent bucket) that had once held lard. Inside the bin were two pairs of new, unworn WWII era combat boots and a vessel containing about two gallons of mercury.

For a minute I thought we were related! but you have a bigger story...
We cleaned up my grand-uncle's basement after his death a few years ago. Both he and his wife had been petroleum engineers for decades, and had amassed quite a collection of...stuff...

He had a brown glass reagent bottle (musta been 500ml) of mercury (so your 2 gallons trumps me

)
Contacted the local university for disposal, they said it was more than they had on the entire campus, and wouldn't even know where to begin.

We ended up having SafetyKleen come and do the basement. between the mercury, old petroleum chemicals, and some tins of powdered (almost dust) gold and silver (woohoo for inhaled heavy metals!) it was a freaking environmental emergency.