A fire erupted yesterday (26 May) morning in a chemical storage unit at the Sri Jayawardanepura University, Fire Service Department sources told The Nation. An emergency call was placed at around 11.30 a.m. yesterday to the Fire Service Department regarding a fire at the university, the source confirmed. A dispatch unit from the Kotte station and two units from the Main Fire Station were dispatched immediately, to quell the fire, he explained. No casualties were incurred due to the fire, since Firefighters were quick to arrive at the scene to put it out, informed sources in the University pointed out to The Nation.

When inquired as to the causes for the breakout of fire in a chemical storage unit, with a university campus, Fire Services officials said that no conclusive reasons were identified for its onset. However, they stated that the storage unit was flooded due to the recent rains that had most of Colombo under water. University sources also confirmed that the storage unit became flooded due to the rains.
When asked why a hazardous materials site, such as the storage unit, did not have adequate preventive measures against such inevitabilities, Fire officials stated that it was a serious risk that must have been addressed by the university administration.However the university sources declined to comment.

A mercury leak inside a century-old clock at Charlestown’s Boston National Historical Park prompted a Level 3 hazmat response by Boston firefighters today after one worker came in close contact with the toxic silver liquid, officials said.

The incident started when a museum specialist, while categorizing and photographing an early 20th century grandfather clock, noticed roughly “two tablespoons” of mercury oozing from the artifact and, as a precaution, called the fire department, said Sean Hennessey, spokesman for the Boston National Historical Park.

A hazmat crew responded to the Third Avenue warehouse around 11:39 a.m., and quickly downgraded their response once they realized the minor spill was under control and no evacuation was necessary, said Boston fire spokesman Steve MacDonald.


One worker who came in close contact self-decontaminated, MacDonald said, simply by thoroughly washing his hands.

Hennessey said the clock contained two small vials of mercury which help balance its swinging pendulum. At some point, one of the vials cracked, and when the specialist moved the clock to take another photo, he saw the leak, Hennessey said.

to Lauderdale Lakes Middle School Wednesday after reports of several children breaking out in rashes.

The team did not find anything in the classroom that would have prompted the outbreak.

Four students were taken to the hospital as a precaution, according to Broward County school officials.

On May 16th a similar incident happened at McArthur High School, also in Broward County.

Where a dozen students and two teachers were taken to the hospital and released shortly afterward.

Hazmat crews rushed to a Toronto high school on Friday after a reported chemical leak forced the building's evacuation.

....TDSB spokesman Ryan Bird said it appears that a chemical valve broke in the school's pool area, causing the leak.

Toronto Fire officials said they received a report of a large gas leak under the school. When they arrived they found a chlorine tank had cracked loose while located near a tank of acid.

Fire officials said they found no fumes and no one was injured, but there had been concerns that the two chemicals would mix together

Police say two students have been taken into custody after two chemical-filled bottles exploded at a Memphis high school.
Memphis police said in a news release Thursday night that two 18-year-old students of Craigmont High School were charged with aggravated assault, felony reckless endangerment and possession of a prohibited weapon.
The high school was evacuated just before noon in what school authorities called a prank explosion. Officials say an assistant principal with asthma went to the hospital after inhaling smoke produced by the mixture. Police said a bomb threat had been called in to the school beforehand.
Shortly after, another bottle exploded about 15 miles away outside a Kroger grocery store. Kroger spokesman Joe Bell says a customer accidentally left behind a bottle with dry ice. No one was injured.

PAWTUCKET – Shea High School Principal Chris Lord reported Wednesday morning that a student brought several vials full of unidentifiable contents into school.

A school resource officer, as a precaution, contacted a hazmat team and the contents of the vials were inspected and found to be harmless, according to Lord.

Lord told The Breeze that a male student picked up the vials from a facility down by the Blackstone River and carried them to school even though he didn't know what was in them. Disciplinary action was pending, he said.

"Common sense is not so common anymore," said Lord. "He's been educated today though."

Shea was not evacuated, according to its principal.

"At no time was safety in the building compromised," said Lord. "Officer Pereira is commended for this precautionary action and the school day will proceed normally."

Two high school students were sent to a hospital because they showed “medical symptoms” after a mercury spill Friday morning, said Charles County Public Schools spokeswoman Katie O’Malley-Simpson.

She did not know what the symptoms were, or where they were sent, but said they had been observed by nurses and emergency medical technicians at Maurice J. McDonough High School in Pomfret. They were sent for treatment as a “precautionary measure,” O’Malley-Simpson.

The incident began Friday morning when an old heating or air-conditioning unit part broke open during an occupational training class at Robert D. Stethem Educational Center in Pomfret, O’Malley Simpson said.

The part contained mercury, which spilled onto the floor. The student who dropped the part, with the help of a friend, cleaned up the spill themselves. When a substitute teacher learned what had happened, he ordered the teenagers out of the classroom, she said.

They were then bussed back to their respective home high schools. Most of the 16 students attend McDonough, but a few attend Henry E. Lackey in Indian Head and Thomas Stone in Waldorf. In addition, one student each attends La Plata and Westlake in Waldorf, she said.

At McDonough, the two students who were later sent to a hospital went to the nurses’ office and reported their exposure. On the advice of firefighters who happened to be visiting, school officials declared “shelter in place,” status, meaning that for the most part students and staff did not leave their classrooms, O’Malley-Simpson said.

McDonough and the Stethem students have been examined for mercury contamination, and none was found, O’Malley-Simpson said. Their shoes were bagged and examined by a fire department hazmat team or a Maryland Department of the Environment inspector and tested before being returned.

Liverpool (WSYR-TV) -- A science class demonstration turned dangerous at a Liverpool middle school Thursday. Three students and a teacher ended up in the hospital with burns. Two of the students are still being treated.

“The first thing that we saw was…there were kids laying in the hallway and that is a pretty horrible sight,” said Liverpool Superintendent, Dr. Richard Johns.

By the time Johns was called to Soule Road Middle School, fire trucks and ambulances surrounded the main door. Inside an eighth grade science room, three students and a teacher were being treated for serious burns.

"The teacher told me that he'd performed this experiment dozens of times in his career and never had a problem with it, but something went wrong, horribly wrong this time,” Dr. Johns told NewsChannel 9.

The teacher was holding a jar of methanol when fumes ignited; it created a flash fire, burning the students nearby.

Rescuers found one young girl burned from the waist up. Another child's eyebrows and lashes were singed by the heat, even though she was wearing goggles.

"Her collar had obviously started on fire and it had burned her nape and the back of her back pretty significantly,” Dr. Johns continued.

HICKORY, N.C. --
A plastic bottle filled with a chemical exploded in a dorm bathroom Tuesday night at Lenoir-Rhyne University in what was likely a prank that went too far.

Lenoir-Rhyne University’s security received a call at about 8:20 p.m. from one of Morgan Hall’s resident advisors. The caller said someone threw a 2-liter drink bottle with a chemical substance through an open window of a bathroom on the second floor of the building, according to a report filed by security officer Kevin Ripley.

When Hickory police began investigating, it became apparent the bottle was placed in the bathroom by one of the people involved in the incident, said Thurman Whisnant with the Hickory Police Department.

“It would not have been possible for it to have been thrown in,” Whisnant said.

Student Maggie Brown was in Morgan Hall when the bottle exploded in the empty bathroom.

“I was walking up the stairs, and it sounded like a boom,” she said. “It sounded like an explosive.”

Ripley told the advisor to clear the hallway of students until he arrived and could examine the bathroom. When Ripley opened the bathroom door he was overwhelmed.

Two people were taken to hospitals after firefighters responded to reports of a chemical odor at the Luther Burbank Elementary School on the Northwest Side, officials said.

An EMS Plan 1 and a Level 1 Hazmat were called at the school in the 2000 block of North Mobile Avenue in the Galewood neighborhood, according to fire media information.

At least five ambulances were sent to the school as a precaution.

Initial reports said the odor may have been pepper spray from the exterior of the school that came in through ventilation, officials said.

When firefighters arrived at the scene, there was no apparent evidence of pepper spray in the interior of the school, but it was detected in a meter reading, officials said.

A radioactive device was extracted from a scrap metal Dumpster in an alley between the Heating and Cooling Plant and the Meeman Journalism Building on April 12.
Sharon Whitaker, who works inside Meeman, said she was alarmed when she looked out her window and saw men in HAZMAT suits inside the Dumpster.
“I just kept thinking in my mind, ‘Something is not right,’” she said. “Whenever you put on a HAZMAT suit, it’s got to be something that has to do with your health.”
The radioactivity in the Dumpster was first detected on April 5 by monitors at Sims Metal Management, where a truck took the bin to dispose of the waste.
The metal processing company routinely scans the contents of bins brought there to check for radioactive substances before admitting their contents into its facilities.
Monitors initially detected radiation levels that were 35 percent above normal background radiation, also known as naturally-occurring radiation, in the bin brought from The University of Memphis.
The truck carrying the Dumpster was scanned two additional times, producing slightly lower percentage results before the Dumpster was returned to its original location on campus that afternoon.
Alton Simpson, director of environmental health and safety and The University’s radiation safety officer, was immediately notified by Physical Plant staff who covered the Dumpster with a tarp to stop the potential spread of contaminants.

Virginia Commonwealth University police and the Richmond Police Department, Richmond Fire, Richmond Ambulance and the HAZMAT team are at 10th and Leigh Streets on the VCU MCV campus.
The scene is at the campus residence hall complex known as Warner Rudd Bear and McRae Halls. The dorms were evacuated, said VCU, when campus police found unidentified compounds, liquids and glassware in a student’s dorm room.
VCU Police Chief John Venuti said that Tyler Hendon, 27, was arrested earlier Tuesday for possession of marijuana and a controlled substance, DMT.
During the course of the investigation, police executed a search warrant at Warner Hall, where Hendon lived downstairs, alone, on the main floor.
Our reporter on the scene said that the Drug Enforcement Administration suited up with masks and respirators and entered the building.
Mike Porter, spokesperson for VCU, said that air quality monitoring tests were performed, and materials were removed.
Venuti said that no evidence of “a functioning laboratory was found.”

Kimball Hall was closed Friday morning due to a “very minor” chemical spill of mercury, according to Claudia Wheatley, deputy University spokesperson.

“It looks like something terrible happened, but it’s a small amount of mercury,” Wheatley said. “They operate under, ‘better safe than sorry.’”

Wheatley compared the chemical spill to a scene in the movie Monster’s Inc., when one of the characters “comes out of the room with a sock on his back” and is treated as if he had been contaminated with a deadly virus.

“That’s kind of how it was,” Wheatley said of the spill. “It was nothing.”

NEWBURGH, N.Y. -- Hazmat crews cleaned up a large chlorine spill at a school in Newburgh at around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. Fire officials said workers were changing a pump for the swimming pool at Newburgh Free Academy when a valve broke. About 150 gallons of chlorine spilled into the building.

Hazmat crews from Orange County and West Point were called in to help remove the liquid. Normally, the school would have been filled with kids, but the schedule prevented that.

"Fortunately no kids in the school, this week was spring break, so it really reduced the size of the problem here today," said Newburgh Fire Chief Michael Vatter.

Three of the maintenance workers were taken to the hospital for evaluation for chlorine inhalation.

or the second time this week, Hazmat teams in Pickering have removed mercury that was discovered in areas where children play.

On Wednesday morning, a mercury “spill” – from a cracked vial – was found in a Dumpster on the property of Holy Redeemer Catholic elementary school on Liverpool Rd. in Pickering, said Sgt. Nancy van Rooy of Durham Regional Police. Mercury was also found on a utility pole on nearby Luna Crt.

The school did not have to be evacuated and no one was exposed to the mercury, van Rooy said.

On Monday, the Hazmat team was called in when a citizen reported that children had been in contact with a suspicious substance on a playground slide at Kinsmen Park, on Sandy Beach Rd., not far from Lake Ontario. The park remains closed.

A small plastic vial was found empty and the substance was tested and confirmed as mercury.

No one was injured in either incident.

Two students were arrested Wednesday after Bountiful police said they detonated four small homemade bombs around the city, including one inside their high school.

Bountiful police Sgt. Gary Koehn said the detonation of the small chemical bomb at Bountiful High School was one of four that occurred about 8:20 a.m. No one was injured and no property damage was reported.

Koehn said the other three bombs, one of which went off in a church parking lot about a block away, exploded in the neighborhoods surrounding the high school.

Koehn said the students — a 16-year-old girl and an 18-year-old man — said they tossed the bombs at random because they wanted to "hear the loud boom." He said the two didn’t intend to hurt anyone.

The bombs were constructed from several household items combined in a plastic water bottle, Koehn said. He said the homemade devices spewed hydrochloric acid and created loud bangs.

The science building at Gordon College was evacuated for a time on Friday morning after a chemical vapor was released for an air-conditioning unit that was being repaired.

Luckily, the Ken Olsen Science Center was mostly empty since classes were not in session on Good Friday and there were fewer students and staff in the building that on a typical Friday,

“There were very few students in the building,” said Wenham Fire Chief Bob Blanchard.

The repairman was working on the AC unit in a service room on the lower level of the building.

“It released a mist and set the detectors off,” Blanchard said.

The repairman quickly shut down the equipment, he said.

Initially, there was concern because it was not clear what the substance was before firefighters checked the air quality in the building.

“Everything turned out OK,” Blanchard said, adding that firefighters ventilated the building.

Related Topics: Air Conditioning, Gordon College, Ken Olsen Science Center, and wenham fire department
Email me updates about this story.

Seven Prescott Valley students and staff were taken to Yavapai Regional Medical Center Monday morning after a chemical smell apparently sickened them and led to a partial evacuation.

Students were evacuated Monday morning from Prescott Valley Charter School after students and staff smelled a "strong odor in the boys' bathroom," said Central Yavapai Fire Capt. Rick Chase, acting fire marshal.

At 8:45 a.m., firefighters from Central Yavapai Fire District and Prescott Fire, Prescott Valley Police and Life Line Ambulance responded to a call about a chemical odor at the school in the 9500 block of E. Lorna Lane.

As the hazardous materials team used their monitors to determine there were no chemicals present and that oxygen levels were all right, the students were moved to another school building, Chase said.

(AP) - Three students have been sent to a juvenile detention center after setting off a homemade explosive device in a school cafeteria in Bradley County.

No one was injured in the incident Tuesday morning at Lake Forest Middle School. Two 14-year-old students and a 15-year-old were charged with possession of a weapon on school property and reckless endangerment.

Investigators said two students brought household chemicals and a plastic bottle to school, combined the items in the bottle and gave it to a third student who tossed it into a trash container. A chemical reaction caused the device to explode.

The students said they learned about the device in a YouTube video.

The Helena Fire Department was dispatched to the Carroll College campus on Wednesday afternoon after a member of the college janitorial staff found a bottle with an unknown substance and opened it.

The person then reportedly smelled the substance, and sustained "unspecified injuries" and sought treatment at St. Peter's Hospital.

The bottle was then closed and removed to the Fortin Science Building to be identified by staff.

Hazardous materials technicians from the Helena Fire Department assisted staff in attempting to identify the substance.

The substance was identified on Wednesday night as a commercial-grade ammonia that is typically used as a cleaning agent.

A press release from the Helena Fire Department on Thursday morning states that there was no danger to the students, staff, or the general public after the initial incident took place.

Police, fire, ambulance and HAZMAT crews are at Rio Bravo-Greeley School in the 6600 block of Enos Ln. for reports of a school bus that was sprayed with pesticides.

So far, there are no reports of injuries, but some students have complained of itchy skin or being nauseated. Firefighters on scene reported it may have been the chemical Lorsban, an insecticide that interferes with an insect's nervous system.

It appears the bus may have driven through a drift and was not sprayed directly while children from the elementary and junior high school were on the bus. Then,the kids were dropped off at school.

The bag of white powder that kicked off a hazmat scare after being found in a University of Virginia bathroom Thursday morning turned out to be cocaine, said Sgt. Darrell Byers of the Albemarle County police.

Dispatch records indicate the cocaine was found in a second floor women’s restroom in the Sheridan G. Snyder Translational Research Building and Fontaine Research Park.

The Charlottesville Fire Department’s regional hazmat team responded after the powder was found, confirmed Charlottesville Fire Chief Charles Werner in an email. After determining the substance wasn’t hazardous, fire officials turned the case over to the county police, according to Werner.

The amount of cocaine was relatively small, consistent with personal use rather than distribution, Byers said. He said investigators will have a tough time figuring out who left behind the cocaine.

Spring break started a day early Friday for Bayfield Middle School students.

A student at Bayfield Middle School dropped a small vial of mercury at school on Thursday, releasing the substance. He had broken into an old thermostat switch in a middle school locker room and removed the mercury vial, according to Troy Zabel, superintendent of Bayfield schools.

On Friday afternoon, the Environmental Protection Agency site coordinator, Durango Hazmat, and Upper Pine River Fire Protection Agency personnel said EPA air quality tests show readings well within the protective health levels throughout the Bayfield Middle School building with the exception of Room #111, where the spill occurred, according to a press release from the school.

Virginia Tech, UCLA, the Courts, and Accountability
Here in Washington, DC, where I live, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, aka VPI&SU, or VA Tech [Editor's note: Thanks to the commenter for the correction] shooting massacre and the just-ended trial that grew out of it are heartbreakingly local.  The killer grew up around here, as did 6 of his 32 victims.  Many families hereabouts send their kids to study in Blacksburg, and thousands of alumni live in the metropolitan area.  At strategic points in the athletic calendar, maroon-and-orange Hokies banners go up all over town.

But that hideous day in 2007 has important national implications as well, as the Chronicle of Higher Education points out.

A Hazmat team was dispatched to an Abingdon elementary school Thursday morning for a report of a chemical spill. School officials confirmed the chemical was a small amount of metallic mercury.

No classes were disrupted.

A sink was being removed in the nurse's suite at William S. James Elementary School in Abingdon and there was a "minor chemical spill," according to Harford County Public Schools Manager of Communications Teri Kranefeld.

A "very small" amount of mercury was found in water in the trap of the sink and leaked out when the sink was removed for replacement, Kranefeld said.

BUCHANAN — A mercury spill in a classroom at Buchanan High School Wednesday morning resulted in the evacuation of a majority of students and a visit by state and Berrien County Health Department officials and the county Sheriff Department’s Hazmat team.

There were no reports of injuries. Students in the classroom where the spill occurred were moved to a separate classroom for examination, Sheriff Paul Bailey said, but others were dismissed without their shoes which were left behind for fear they might contain contaminants.

Bailey commended the school for taking precautions to make certain the mercury was contained.

The sheriff said the student who had the mercury attends 8th grade and had a vial of the substance in his backpack. Classes were dismissed and students allowed to leave, except in the room where the spill occurred, because the student with the mercury had been in other areas of the building prior to the spill and there was a possibility the mercury might have leaked from the backpack, Bailey said.

Three adults were taken to the hospital Tuesday morning after being overcome by chemical fumes at St. Margaret School in Bel Air, Harford County emergency officials said. No children were injured.

A chemical odor in the building was reported at 8:30 a.m. Harford County's hazardous materials team and Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company responded and evacuated the building at 205 Hickory Ave., Rich Gardiner, a spokesman for Harford County Volunteer Fire and EMS Association, said.

Three faculty members feeling ill from the odor were taken to Upper Chesapeake Medical Center in Bel Air, while three other adults at the scene refused treatment. Two of the three taken to the hospital had fainted at the school, according to a press release from the Archdiocese of

No children complained of symptoms from the odor, which was attributed to the cross-contamination of cleaning solutions, according to the press release. Sean Caine, from the archdiocese, said people reported a strong bleach-like odor.

One person was hospitalized because of a chlorine leak at St. George's School in Vancouver on Monday.

According to Vancouver fire officials, the Hazmat team was called in and the school was evacuated but students were allowed to return early Monday afternoon.

Officials say the leak was related to work being done on a decomissioned pool, which resulted in a small amount of chlorine spilling.

Austin fire emergency crews have cleared the scene of a hazardous material call at Welch Hall on the University of Texas campus after nothing was found at the scene, said Battalion Chief Thayer Smith.
Earlier:
Austin emergency workers have responded to a hazardous-materials call at Welch Hall on the University of Texas campus this afternoon, Austin fire and school officials said.
Emergency medical service workers initially responded around noon to a call of a University of Texas police officer who had fallen ill while checking on an alarm in a tunnel below Welch Hall, said UT spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon.
Now, that call has been upgraded to a hazardous0material call as Austin fire workers look to check the air quality in the tunnel area and whether it may have triggered the officer to fall ill, Weldon and an Austin fire official said.

A chemical fire in a locked, vacant science room at Hamburg Area High School on Feb. 23 was ruled accidental following an investigation the next day.

At 4:21 p.m., Hamburg Fire Company was dispatched to the school for an automatic fire alarm. When Hamburg Fire Chief Troy Hatt arrived on the scene, he found a fire in a science room and heavy smoke coming off the roof.

Trooper Michael Yeity, a state police fire marshal who conducted the investigation along with Hatt and Hamburg Police, said the cause of the fire was the chemical reaction of several chemicals contained in a cardboard box on a counter in the room.

“We’re not sure exactly what happened and probably will never know how it started,” said Superintendent Steven Keifer. “There was an investigation done by state police and there’s no conclusive evidence there, either.”

“We’re not sure if a container failed or if things got bumped over, but there was actually a chemical reaction in the room that caused the fire,” said Hatt.

SEYMOUR — A bulging bottle of chlorine used to clean Seymour High School’s swimming pool forced the evacuation of students and staff Friday, and ultimately an early dismissal.

School had opened two hours late Friday because of the morning snow, and then closed after a custodian noticed one of the chlorine bottles delivered Friday morning was defective.

There were no injuries during the incident.

According to Director of Security Richard Kearns, the school went into lockdown at around 10:45 a.m. Students and staff then were sent into the steel track and field shed near DeBarber Field for shelter and warmth. Eventually, they went into the school gym, where they waited for the buses to take them home.

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. -- Several high school students throughout Kern County got the opportunity to see firsthand what hazmat crews deal with.
One of the ideas behind Youth Leadership Bakersfield is to give students experiences that will help them develop leadership skills and career choices.
On Wednesday, 32 students in the program went to the Department of Public Health, put on protective suits and saw up close and personal what hazmat crews deal with.
"They put us in a situation like it was a real hazardous chemical spill and I was a little bit scared at first, I'm not going to lie," said Avery Andrew, student.
Crews put on a scenario of what they actually do during a hazardous chemical spill, though it wasn't meant to scare students, but broaden their perspective.
"Part of what we do is actually protecting the public and these are the kids that were interested in protecting. We want to make them more aware of what we do and what goes on," said Brian Pitts, Kern County Environmental Health.

SALEM, Ore. - A one-liter pop bottle that turned up following a police chase at an elementary school caused a bit of a stir on Wednesday.

The incident happened around 1:40 p.m. at Mary Eyre Elementary School at 4868 Buffalo Drive S.E.

Earlier in the day, police had been involved in a vehicle pursuit where the suspect fled on foot and ran across the school's property. Officers apprehended the person, cleared the area and activities at the school returned to normal.

A student later found a one-liter pop bottle on the grounds and gave it to a teacher, who then gave it to the janitorial staff. The bottle ended up in a trash dumpster but concerns were raised when it began to swell. The bottle had some type of liquid in it and was sealed with a cap.

Firefighters and a HAZMAT team then responded to the school to check it out. They later rendered it safe and collected the liquid contents for testing. It is unknown at this point what exactly was in the bottle.

Police also do not know if the suspect who ran from them dropped the bottle during the chase or if it ended up on the school grounds some other way.

Fire officials say they may have identified the cause of an odor that sent 13 people to the hospital and canceled classes for a local high school.

Columbus fire's HAZMAT team responded to Westland High School, 146 Galloway Rd., at about 9:30 a.m. Monday.

South-Western City Schools' Sandy Nekoloff said there was a report of an odor in a classroom.

Columbus Division of Fire Battalion Chief Michael Fowler said they believe the cause of the odor was a drip of sodium hydroxide from a boiler near an airduct system. The chemical was previously referred to as an acute airborne irritant.

Fowler said the chemical was very diluted and was used to keep pipes in the heating system clean and that the drip is the only logical cause they could identify.

GREENACRES — Four Tradewinds Middle School students may face criminal charges for allegedly bringing a bottle containing a mix of household chemicals to school Thursday and setting it off in the gym's boys bathroom.

The four students, who also face suspension and even expulsion, are in custody, said Nat Harrington, Palm Beach County School District spokesman. Two were arrested and taken to West Palm Beach's Juvenile Assessment Center.

Two of the students brought the explosive onto a school bus and told two others what to do with it. The second pair of students set it off "as a prank," Harrington said.

HUNDREDS of students at a flagship faculty in one of Scotland’s biggest universities face indefinite disruption to their courses after a fire ripped through a city centre campus.

Engineering lectures and seminars at the University of Strathclyde have been postponed following the blaze on Tuesday evening at the James Weir building in Glasgow’s Montrose Street. The student who reported the fire told The Scotsman yesterday he feared there would be a “large explosion,” given that it broke out in a department containing laboratories with hazardous chemicals.

A WOMAN has been taken to hospital with minor acid burns after a chemical spill at a Wattle Grove school.

Shortly after noon today firefighters from Liverpool and the Hazardous Material Unit from Chester Hill were called to a chemical spill at the St Marks Coptic College on Australis Ave.

An Ambulance NSW spokeswoman confirmed a woman, aged in her 50s, suffered acid burns to an arm and leg.

Chemical fumes from cleaning a bubbler drain caused the evacuation of Bessie Allen Middle School on Thursday morning.

Superintendent Aaron Sadoff said a drain cleaner was being used to unplug a bubbler near the cafeteria, and during the process, a chemical reaction occurred in the pipe, causing a bad odor to permeate through the school.

The odor did not dissipate, he said. Students from Bessie Allen Middle School were moved to the Horace Mann High School Performing Arts Center while the North Fond du Lac Fire Department used fans to clear out the odor.

MIDDLEBURG, Va. (WUSA) -- Middleburg Academy has been closed for the remainder of the day, according Loudoun County Fire spokesperson Mary Maguire.

According to Loudoun County Fire officials, around 9 a.m. Thursday  there was a chemical spill in one of the classrooms in Middleburg Academy.

The school is located at 35321 Notre Dame Lane in Middleburg, VA.  The school was evacuated.

Maguire said only one adult was exposed to the spill and they were transported to a local hospital for treatment.

Hazmat units are still at the school trying to determine the nature of the product that was spilled and once they do that they will stabilize it.

EDMONDS, Wash. -- Police say two homemade bombs went off at Edmonds-Woodway High School on Monday.

The bombs, which were placed inside two trash cans in a school cafe, exploded Monday just before 11:45 a.m., according to school principal Michelle Trifunovic.

Fire investigators say the explosives were bottles containing a common household chemical. When the chemical was sealed, the pressure forced the bottles to explode.

In a note to parents, Trifunovic said the small explosions didn't damage the building and nobody was injured.

The father of a student who died following an explosion in shop class says he is relieved charges have been laid against the Ottawa Catholic school board.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour has laid three charges against the Ottawa-Carleton Catholic District School Board under the Occupational Health and Safety Act in relation to the May 26, 2011incident

Eric Leighton, 18, was attempting to cut open an old oil drum at Mother Teresa Catholic Secondary School when it exploded. He died of his injuries and four others who were in the classroom were injured.

UPDATED 1:45 p.m.: Students and teachers were evacuated from Stuart-Hobson Middle School Thurday afternoon when a fire was reported at the Northeast campus.

The “fire” turned out to be an issue with a fluorescent light ballast. But eight students and one teacher told emergency responders that their eyes were burning, irritated by the odor, said D.C. Fire & EMS spokesman Lon Walls.

HazMat teams searched the building, and the students and teacher were treated onsite after the 12:11 p.m. call; no one was transported to the hospital.

After the Arizona Fire Marshal’s Office wrote up Mesa High School during the first week of school for improper storage and identification of chemicals on campus, the district is nearing completion of a comprehensive effort to identify and log thousands of chemicals in Mesa’s 84 schools.

The district is entering the names, amounts and expiration dates of the substances into a database that can be accessed by school officials and outside emergency workers. Officials also are creating a comprehensive safety training program for everyone who handles chemicals in the district — from custodians to chemistry teachers.

“If there is an emergency — say someone ingests or is exposed to chemicals — the first responder is going to want to know exactly what they were exposed to,” said district operations director Rick Michalek. In the event of a fire at a school, firefighters also need to know what kinds of explosive substances might be inside of a school.

Michalek said the district had already hired John Amenson, a safety consultant with the firm Risknomics LLC., when it realized at the start of the school year that it needed to speed up plans for a new training program and the database of all chemicals being used in the school system.

LOWELL, Mich. (WZZM) Lowell Public Schools dismissed High School students early today after a routine check turned up an expired science chemical.

Officials with the district say the chemical posed no immediate risk, but as a precaution hazmat was called in to dispose of the material.  Students were released early to ensure their safety.

As a result, the district also dismissed middle school students early so administrators could coordinate bussing.

WYE MILLS - Emergency crews, including a hazardous materials team from the Anne Arundel County Fire Company, are working to clean up a liquid chlorine leak at Chesapeake College
Queen Anne's County Department of Emergency Services reports no injuries were caused by the leak, which left the pool's building closed. DES officials said only the one building was evacuated.
DES officials said the entire campus was not cleared because the liquid chlorine was no ventilated out of the one building. Police though did have the entrances to the college blocked off while emergency crews were handling the scene.

A fire at the University of Maryland College Park is now under control.

The Prince George's County Fire Department tells WBAL Radio the blaze started around 3:15 this afternoon in the J.M. Patterson building.

Fire officials say no one was injured.

Mark Brady, a spokesman with the Prince George's County Fire Department, says firefighters found a fire in the electrical room on the second floor of the chemistry building.

The fire had spread to the attic of the building.

Brady says the sprinklers and firefighters were able to bring the fire under control in about fifteen minutes.

He says as a precaution the Hazmat team was called because of the use of chemicals in the building.

Students are still on winter break.

The apparent source of the smell was a pond located off school property, in an adjacent subdivision behind the portables. When it got worse, the principal called authorities.

Seven portables nearest to the pond were evacuated, Marsh said, and the students relocated to other classrooms. An Orange County Fire Rescue Hazmat team investigated.

According to a Fire Rescue spokeswoman, Hazmat determined the cause of smell was a chemical fungicide/algaecide that had been sprayed into the pond recently.

County Roads & Drainage officials confirmed the chemical, which prevents algae blooms, is non-toxic. Hazmat cleared the area after determining chemical levels were not dangerous.

According to OCPS, two students initially reported nausea, but soon recovered. A third student reported asthma-like symptoms and was treated with an inhaler and sent home.

jeweiner@tribune.com or 407-420-5171

A fire that broke out in the garage of a house on the campus of The Lawrenceville School was extinguished before it could cause any significant damage this afternoon, Friday, Jan. 13.

Spontaneous combustion of rags soaked with a chemical cleaner started the fire in the two-car garage attached to a faculty members’ residence on Woods Drive on the private school’s campus, according to Lawrence Township Fire Inspector Rich Soltis, who investigated the blaze.

The fire, which spread from the rags to the contents of a plastic storage tote and a vacuum, generated a decent amount of smoke and activated a heat detector connected to the home’s fire alarm system, Soltis said.

CHESAPEAKE, Va. (WAVY) - The Tidewater Community College Chesapeake campus has reopened after a gas leak caused the campus to evacuate Tuesday morning.

According to Capt. Mike Theibault with the Chesapeake Fire Department, a four inch gas line was severed on Cedar Road around 8:20 a.m. by an excavator in front of the TCC campus.

HAZMAT crews responded with monitoring equipment and determined the area had not reached a hazardous amount of gas away from the excavator.

Holladay, Utah(ABC 4 News)- The Jordan Valley school was evacuated early this morning as hazmat crews cleaned a chemical spill. 

A custodian came into work at 6am and discovered a strong chemical smell near the schools pool area.  The worker called the fire department in and they decided to evacuate the building. 

Canyons school district spokeswoman Jennifer Toomer-Cook tells ABC4 that the staff was allowed to go home as the crews cleaned the spill up.  The school is not in session today as it is the kids holiday break.  

PHILADELPHIA - The mystery of what irritated dozens at a local school has been solved.

The problem surfaced at Father Judge High School in Northeast Philly earlier this month.

It was earlier this month that dozens of people went to area hospitals complaining of eye irritation after a weekend cheerleading tournament at the high school.

We first reported that fire investigators suspected it was due to a broken light fixture.

Even so, the school went through several hazardous materials tests and was even closed for a couple of days while officials investigated.

Well, on Wednesday health officials confirmed the irritation was due to a defective metal halide lamp. They believe it emitted UV rays, which caused the irritation.

The school is fixing the bulb.

The FDA reports that broken and unshielded bulbs have been known to cause eye and skin injuries, particularly in school gymnasiums.

None of the people who went to the hospital with eye irritation are expected to have any lasting problems.

We first learned about this story through a tip from one of our FOX 29 viewers. Send us your story ideas by logging on to MyFoxPhilly dot com and clicking on the white envelope icon, or send us an email at fox29@foxtv.com .

The San Luis Obispo County Hazmat team was sent to investigate and clean up after someone detonated a device commonly called a chemical bomb shortly before 7 p.m. on Wednesday at Atascadero High School.
Atascadero police said the explosion of the small chemical bomb did not cause any permanent damage and no one was hurt. However, it is a felony to make and detonate one of these devices.
The bomb maker apparently combined household cleaning supplies in a plastic bottle and sealed it causing a chemical reaction that made the plastic bottle expand and eventually explode, a process frequently taught in high school science classes.

WILLIAMSBURG—
Students are back in class after a HAZMAT scare at Berkeley Middle School Tuesday morning.

Up to 15 classrooms of students were evacuated around 10:30 a.m. after a suspicious liquid was discovered in a bathroom in the school.

A Williamsburg-James City Schools spokesman said someone smelled a strong odor coming from one of the bathrooms, and that it was emanating from a small amount of unidentified liquid that had spilled onto the floor. He explained the Williamsburg Fire Department was called as a precaution and the classrooms evacuated. An evacuation of the entire school never occurred.

Police and firefighters responded to the discovery, relocating affected students to the gymnasium. The remainder of the building was declared safe.

A blast phone message to Berkeley parents from the school division said hazardous materials experts took readings in the vicinity of the bathroom, and there was no hazard present. Williamsburg Fire spokesman Eric Stone said the fire department cleared the scene at about 12:15p.m.

"We have have not identified the substance," he said. "The only thing I can tell you is that it is a non-hazardous liquid."

Stone said the fire marshall had opened an investigation, but that authorities are satisfied with the determination that the liquid was not hazardous. No further action or investigation will be pursued.

SCHENECTADY — Mont Pleasant Middle School was evacuated Monday afternoon when someone unleashed what the fire chief described as a "respiratory irritant" in a first-floor hallway, according to police and school officials. The incident occurred at 2:45 p.m. after school had already been dismissed, officials said.

Even though a staff member reported the substance to be pepper spray, the chief said the fire department's HAZMAT team couldn't confirm that the gas was the foul-smelling substance after conducting tests.

"We cannot prove it was pepper spray but it may have been something similar to it," Schenectady Fire Chief Michael Della Rocco said. "We haven't been able to determine what the substance was but it did dissipate."

BERKELEY, Calif. (KGO) -- Stanley Hall on the UC Berkeley campus has reopened after it was the source of a massive diesel fuel spill that reached all the way to the Bay over the weekend.

The emergency was caused by some sort of malfunction with a tank feeding fuel to the emergency generator basement. The diesel then made it out of Stanley Hall due to the pumps in the basement that remove natural water that often collects. About 100 students were immediately evacuated from the building. Crews quickly started siphoning the fuel from the basement with large pumping trucks.

"The agencies are telling us that it was a very small fraction that made its way into the bay, unfortunately," said Mark Freiberg with the Office of Environmental Health and Safety.

A student was injured and another arrested after a homemade bomb exploded in class at El Capitan High School Tuesday.

The bottle bomb was set off inside a trash can just after 2 p.m. according to San Diego County Sheriff’s Department spokesperson Melissa Aquino.

The teenager who detonated the bomb was interviewed at the Santee Sheriff’s Station and then arrested and booked into juvenile hall. The teen’s identity has not been released.

Another student who was passing by the trash can at the time of the explosion suffered minor injuries.

Hazmat was called out to make sure there were no additional threats. After a sweep of the area, deputies determined the explosion was isolated to the trash can in the classroom.

Classes are expected to resume Wednesday. 

SAN DIEGO -- An apparent bottle bomb detonated inside a Lakeside high school classroom during school hours Tuesday.
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According to authorities, the device exploded inside a classroom at El Capitan High School shortly before 3 p.m.
Grossmont Union High School District spokeswoman Catherine Martin told 10News a two-litter bottle containing an unknown substance was placed in a trash can inside the classroom during the school's 7th period.
Santee Fire Department officials and San Diego County sheriff's deputies were summoned to investigate and later determined that a pressurized chemical reaction occurred in what appeared to be a bottle bomb, causing the explosion and setting off school fire alarms.
No students or school staff members were seriously injured, but one student was transported after complaining of ringing in the ears, eye irritation and a headache.

Light Fixture Behind Father Judge High School HazMat
Officials: Broken Sodium Fixture Released Gas

Updated: Monday, 05 Dec 2011, 11:07 AM EST
Published : Monday, 05 Dec 2011, 7:47 AM EST

PHILADELPHIA - Father Judge High School became off-limits and two local emergency rooms were temporarily quarantined, according to fire department sources, after a hazardous materials incident was traced back to the school.

At least five to 10 victims, several of them cheerleaders, have been complaining of eye irritation and visited two or three emergency rooms, FOX 29's Sean Tobin reported.

We're told parents are also among the patients who are being treated with the cheerleaders after they visited the all-boy school Sunday to participate in a competition being held there.

For some of the patients the problem was so bad that they were taken to the hospital to have their eyes flushed, Tobin reported.

Victims went to as many as three hospitals in Northeast Philadelphia, and officials soon figured out that the common bond was they had all been at Father Judge.

Hazardous materials crews responded to the school, located on Solly Road in Northeast Philadelphia, before dawn to investigate.

Shortly after 7 a.m., fire officials said says a sodium light fixture broke in the auditorium, releasing a gas that caused the irritation.

The cases led to the quarantining of those two hospital emergency rooms, and the Department of Homeland Security was even notified, Tobin reported.

“To go to Berkeley Pit Lake, you have to complete a forty-hour Hazmat program—and that’s just to stand next to the water,” advises Andrea Stierle, a research professor at the University of Montana-Missoula, who began studying samples from the Pit sixteen years ago. And when employees of the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology venture out onto the lake, they do so in a boat that’s made of fiberglass (as opposed to aluminum), “because they don’t want it to dissolve before they get back to shore,” she continues. It’s probably best that the privately-owned Berkeley Pit—a mile by a mile-and-a-half across, and encircled by a barbed-wire fence—is off-limits to all but a select few. After all, it’s an abandoned open pit copper mine filled with an estimated forty billion gallons of acidic, metal-contaminated water—part of the largest Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Superfund site in the United States, and an ongoing liability for its “responsible parties,” the Atlantic Richfield Company (which merged into British Petroleum) and Montana Resources.

Today a HAZMAT incident occurred at the ECPI in Chesterfield county, confirmed Lt. Jason Elmore with the Chesterfield Fire Department. 

A thermometer broke inside a classroom and spilled out onto a desk and the floor.

There were 10 students that had to be isolated and examined for exposure. All of the students were reported to be fine, and there was no need to transport them for further medical help, said Elmore.

MARSHALL - Part of the Southwest Minnesota State University campus was sealed off on Wednesday while the Marshall Fire Department and the Southwest Chemical Assessment Team responded to an explosion in the university's swimming pool area. A plastic container called a chemical erosion feeder, used to keep swimming pools clean, exploded in the lower mechanical room adjacent to the swimming pool shortly after 3 p.m. on Wednesday.

No one was injured, but CAT responders donned protective suits in order to remove hazardous material from the building.

SMSU Associate Director of University Relations Jim Tate told the Independent the container - about 3 feet tall and 8 inches in diameter - had been filled Wednesday with 3-inch chlorine tablets instead of the normal 1-inch tablets because the school apparently had run out of the 1-inch tablets. The container wasn't filled all the way to the top as it normally would've been, Tate said, so the volume in the container was the same.

Tate said he was told by the physical plant employee who was working on the pool at the time that about 15 to 20 minutes after the "chlorinator" went back online, it exploded.

"It was the same chlorine, same volume of tablets in the feeder," Tate said. "Nothing changed except the size of the tablets."

10:30 a.m. update: Students, faculty and staff were allowed back into Galena High School about 9:50 a.m., after a small chemical spill in a photo lab prompted the evacuation of the school.

HazMat Crews isolated the spill, cleaned it up and used fans to ventilate the classroom.

CHESHIRE - Police, fire and state safety officials are investigating an explosion inside the Cheshire High School gym that sent two people to MidState Medical Center.
The explosion, reported at 5:37 p.m. by someone in the gym, was caused by a gas-forming mixture of unknown household chemicals inside a plastic water bottle, said police Lt. Chris Cote. The gas caused throat irritation and headaches for two people who breathed in the mix of fumes, Cote said.
Even though no chemicals landed on anyone in the gym, which was being used for girls volleyball practice at the time, the incident is being handled as more than a simple prank, Cote said.

CHESHIRE, Conn. — Police and fire officials say what appears to be a homemade bomb has exploded in the Cheshire High School gym, but there are no injuries or damage.

Police Lt. Chris Cote tells The Hartford Courant Friday night that emergency responders who went to the gym found a plastic bottle filled with chemicals. The bottle was tossed into the gym near where the girls' volleyball team was practicing just after 5:30 p.m.

Police said two coaches were taken to a hospital after complaining of skin irritation.

Cote said state police are trying to determine who made the bomb and what was used. He said he had no information about a suspect or whether a student is suspected.

Tulsa Public Schools is investigating its CNG school buses after two drivers complained fumes made them sick.

School officials say they have not linked the bus drivers’ sickness to the buses but are taking precautionary measures. Both TPS mechanics and the Tulsa Fire Department’s hazmat teams are looking at the buses.

The district is also looking into placing carbon monoxide detectors in the buses. TPS converted their buses to CNG in 2009.

AURORA, Colo. — Students evacuated from an elementary school in Aurora on Wednesday returned to the building to finish classes.

Aurora firefighters say three people including two students were taken to the hospital after a possible chemical leak in the kitchen at Paris Elementary School.

Aurora Fire Department spokesman Allen Robnett said the children are being loaded onto school buses with blankets to keep them warm until investigators can determine what happened.

Parents pickup their children at North Middle School in Aurora, Colo., on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011. The students were evacuated from nearby Paris Elementary School because of a gas leak. Aurora firefighters say three people including two students have been taken to the hospital after a possible chemical leak in the kitchen at Paris Elementary School. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski)
Fire department spokesman Allen Robnett said one adult was hospitalized because of gas fumes and two children were treated for asthma attacks because of the cold weather.

Fire Rescue workers responded to a Hialeah school Monday after several students began complaining about a burning sensation in their eyes, officials said.

About 20 kids at Jose Marti Middle School at 5701 Northwest 24th Avenue were affected around 9 a.m., according to Hialeah Fire Rescue spokesman Cesar Espinosa.

A command post was set up to treat the children and a Hazmat unit was brought in to determine the cause, Espinosa said.

Officials said 20 children were taken to Palmetto General Hospital with non-life threatening injuries. More were treated at the scene.

It's believed the situation was caused by someone spraying pepper spray in a stairwell, but the cause is still being investigated, officials said.

The school was evacuated and officials said classes weren't dismissed but any student who wanted to leave would be allowed.

WATERVILLE, N.Y. (WKTV) - Students and staff members at Waterville Junior and Senior High School were evacuated a little after Noon on Thursday the New York State Police Bomb Disposal Unit out of Albany was called in to assess and dispose of some potentially hazardous chemicals.

"We are concerned about one of the chemicals that is possibly dangerous and could call an explosion," says Gary Lonczak, superintendent of schools.

The main issue is a bottle of picric acid which is over 25 years old.

When in liquid form, the chemical is safe to use. However, the compound has solidified over the years, which means it could be potentially explosive if not removed properly.

"We acted as quickly as we could and we followed protocol and we got good advice from the State Police and hazmat unit," says Lonczak.

Administrators were never advised to evacuate students, but they say they did so as a precautionary measure.

Lonczak says he will send an informational letter to parents regarding the incident and on Friday, the school day will resume as usual.

Hazmat crews were called about 11:30 a.m. to the Freedom Academy in the 1600 block of Lombard Street.
Sky Team 11 Capt. Roy Taylor reported that some students found a glass jar with unknown contents on the school's property, and it broke after they took it inside. He said the students complained of their eyes being irritated.
The school was evacuated as hazmat crews and the Department of the Environment checked it out. Taylor said two students were taken to Johns Hopkins Children's Center as a precaution.
Students were allowed back inside the building about an hour later.

Washington, DC--(ENEWSPF)--October 27, 2011.  Forty-seven students from Edgewood Middle School in St. Clair Township, Ohio, reportedly fell ill after the school’s hired pest control company sprayed the herbicide Momentum, which contains the toxic ingredients 2,4-D, triclopyr and clopyralid, on nearby playing fields to treat for clover and other weeds. The incident and others like it demonstrate the need for a comprehensive national policy to protect children from harmful and unnecessary exposure to toxic chemicals. Six students were taken to nearby hospitals and twenty-one students total were treated for symptoms, including headaches, breathing difficulties, nausea and dizziness.

PUTNEY -- Police are investigating the detonation of an explosive device at the Landmark College campus.
On Friday, at about 7:40 p.m., members of the Vermont State Police and the Putney Fire Department responded to the college after the school’s security heard the blast across the campus. The explosion was described as "loud as a 12-gauge shotgun blast," according to campus security.
The device used was described as an "over-pressure device" which in this case was a plastic container that contained at least two substances that when mixed caused a chemical reaction producing a gas inside the closed container, Sgt. Mike Sorensen said.
"When the pressure became too great the container ruptured and the explosion resulted," he said.
No one was injured as a result of the incident, Sorensen said.

Oct. 17--SAN BERNARDINO -- Firefighters evacuated more than 1,200 students and staff from the Art Institute of California on Monday after a bucket of cleaning solution sickened several students in a cooking class.
San Bernardino firefighters came to the campus, 674 E. Brier Drive at 9:20 a.m., when they received a call about four students who became sick after mixing a solution in a cleaning bucket.
"It turned into a mist or cloud and they had difficulty breathing," said San Bernardino fire spokesman Tom Rubio.
Firefighters took two of the four students to hospitals for treatment. The other two were examined at the scene for contamination, but were not hospitalized.

A San Bernardino Fire Department hazmat team was called to the Art Institue of San Bernardino after four students were overcome by noxious fumes early Monday.

The students had difficulty breathing after inhaling a bucket of cleaning materials.

The fumes forced the evacuation of 1,250 persons from the campus located along the 600 block of East Brier Drive in San Bernardino.

The incident happened around 9:20 a.m. when students were mixing the cleaning solution in a bucket intending to clean up some paint.

“They inhaled it and it irritated their lungs,” San Bernardino City Fire Department spokesman Tom Rubio said.

A strange odor caused a scare in Charlottesville Thursday afternoon.  Firefighters had to evacuate a building inside the Fontaine Research Park for several hours.

Shortly before 1 p.m. Thursday, a pair of batteries overheated and exploded in the basement.  That sent battery acid spilling onto the floor.

A Charlottesville hazmat crew was on scene cleaning up the spill.  No one was injured.

"You obviously don't want to be in the area when the battery acid is dispersed.  It's a caustic agent.  It's an acidic, so it can burn you," said Chief Charles Werner with the Charlottesville Fire Department.

Those batteries were a part of the building's backup electricity system.  The explosion caused minimal damage.  After clean up, hazmat crews remained on scene to ventilate the building before allowing workers back in.

TRENTON, Ohio -- Nearly 50 students became ill Tuesday morning at a Butler County school.
...
Butler County EMA director Jeff Galloway said five students were transported to hospitals for examination at parents' request, and another 42 were examined at the scene or at the adjacent high school.

Galloway said that it appears the students were sickened by an herbicide, Momentum, used to treat the lawn outside the school about two hours before the first illnesses were reported. The chemical can be irritating if inhaled, officials said.
"We're thinking that chemical and the smell of it went into the classrooms. The chemical they're dealing with is an irritant by inhalation," Galloway said.

A respected nuclear physicist mistakenly allows his graduate assistant to run a workshop at the university's small-scale version of a nuclear reactor and exposes the class to radiation. At another institution, a fume hood fails to contain an acrid gas in a chemistry laboratory, causing several students to be rushed to the hospital.

With so many potential risks of serious health-and-safety problems at colleges and universities, you'd think that safety officers would be among the best-known administrators on any campus. Yet they have one of those jobs in higher education that tends to be invisible, much like auditors or institutional researchers: Everyone knows they're important, but no one quite understands what they do.

In a June column, I explored the role of the college auditor. Many readers wrote to thank me for demystifying the craft and showing how an auditor's job is to protect not only the institution but also those who work there. So I'd like to take the same approach to health-and-safety officers.

The sheer number of risks to health and safety—especially at research universities—is considerable. That's why most institutions support a health-and-safety officer, and often an entire office of them. The position has become indispensable, no matter that many people on campus are unaware of the safety officer's existence.

BIRMINGHAM (AP) — A Birmingham fire official says five students and one teacher were taken to the hospital as a precaution after odors from sewer work outside wafted into a high school.

Birmingham Fire Chief Mike Metz says a construction crew was working on a sewer outside Seaholm High School on Thursday afternoon, and the building's ventilation system sucked in some of the odor. Metz says the students and the teacher complained of feeling nauseous.

Metz says the crew was working for Oakland County relining sewers, and the smell came from a resin they were using.

The odor affected between 20 and 25 classrooms at the school, which has 1,350 students.

EXETER, N.H.—A New Hampshire high school had to be evacuated after a chemical spill that sent three staff members to the hospital. No students were injured.

Classes were cancelled at the Exeter High School at about noon on Tuesday after the chemical was discovered near the school's loading dock.

Principal Vic Sokul told The Portsmouth Herald that a custodian using a trash compactor noticed a strong smell and notified school administrators.

School officials then called the fire department, which advised that the school be evacuated.

Sokul said no students were exposed to the chemical, which emergency responders believe was sulfuric acid from a container that was placed in the trash compactor.

Exeter Fire Chief Brian Comeau said three high school workers were taken by ambulance for possible chemical exposure.

ARMY BOMB DISPOSAL experts have made safe an unstable chemical after sealing off several streets near St Stephen’s Green in Dublin.
The military unit was called in to the Catholic University School on Lower Leeson Street, after a quantity of picric acid was found. The bomb disposal team removed the chemical to a nearby piece of open ground, then carried out a controlled explosion.
Traffic was stopped in the area as the unit arrived at 4.15pm. The scene was declared safe at 6.10pm.
According to the Defence Forces, the substance was discovered during a routine audit of chemicals held in the school’s science department. Picric acid is a reagent which is routinely used in laboratories, but over time it can crystallise and become unstable.
It has caused a number of alerts in recent weeks, including some at schools in Limerick and Celbridge, and the offices of the pharmaceutical regulator in Dublin. The Leeson Street incident is the 21st time this year that the unit has dealt with dangerous substances, and its 186th call-out since January.

THE IRISH DEFENCE Forces have carried out controlled explosions on dangerous chemicals discovered in two schools in Dublin and Cork today.
The Forces’ Army Bomb Disposal Team was called to Grange Community College in Donaghmede, Dublin just after 2pm this afternoon after a quantity of 2, 4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine was discovered.
2, 4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine is a chemical reagent which is found in laboratories.
It is relatively sensitive to shock and friction and can become unstable over time if it crystallises.
The quantity of the chemical was removed from the school to a safe location, where it was destroyed by means of a controlled explosion and the scene was declared safe at 3.30pm.
In a second incident, the Army Bomb Disposal Team was called to St Mary’s Secondary School in Macroom, Co Cork at around 3pm after another quantity of 2, 4-Dinitrophenylhydrazine was discovered.
Again, the chemical was removed to a safe located and destroyed by a controlled explosion.
Today’s call outs were the 185th and 186th this year, and the 20th and 21st involving what the Defence Forces call “substances of concern”.