Firefighters were called to a production facility this week to ventilate the facility after a chemical spill occurred. The spill was considered a HAZMAT situation and several neighboring businesses were evacuated.
HAZMAT is an abbreviation for “hazardous materials” and the term is used when substances or materials pose a risk to health, property, or the environment.
Chemical Spill Resulting from Chemical Reaction
The chemical spill occurred from a chemical reaction during production processes at the facility
Most of us learned about chemical reactions from elementary school projects. If you ever made lava erupt from a volcano in school, by mixing vinegar and baking soda, then you saw a chemical reaction make a new material . . . carbon dioxide, which gave the appearance of lava.
Unlike the harmless lava made in the school project, the chemical spill created from the chemical reaction at the production facility posed a risk from exposure to the materials used in the reaction and the spill itself.
Blackwell’s, Inc. Routinely Responds to Emergency Industrial Cleaning
Blackwell’s, Inc. routinely gets the call to respond to emergency industrial cleaning at industrial facilities. Thankfully, most of our calls for cleaning of emergency spills are not considered as HAZMAT.
When we do receive the call for HAZMAT industrial cleaning, our associates are OSHA trained and PPE equipped to manage and dispose of these hazardous materials into appropriate containers for EPA approved facilities to remove from the site.
Painstakingly Removing One Chunk of Hazardous Material at a Time
At this facility’s chemical spill, our Blackwell’s, Inc. associates first had to remove the hazardous and cured material, made in the chemical reaction, from two floors in the facility. We did this by using razor knives to cut through the cured material and painstakingly remove one chunk of the material at a time. After the bulk of the hazardous material was removed and placed into appropriate containers, we used dry ice blasting to clean and began bringing the stainless-steel chemical reactor equipment back into production use.
