PATRONS of a Surry Hills pub were evacuated yesterday after a suspected cyanide leak.

Police, ambulance and the firebrigade were called to the Schwartz Brewery Hotel following the discovery of a man's body in an upstairs room.

The man was found at about 2pm and initial enquiries led police to believe that he had ingested sodium cyanide.

The threat arose from a number of chemical items found in the upstairs room.

By 4.30pm the building had been cleared by hazardous materials officers and there was no risk of contagion.

Ladue, MO (KSDK) - An accidental spill at a Ladue jewelry store prompted the closure of the westbound lanes of Clayton Road and several nearby businesses.

Someone spilled a container of sodium cyanide at Albarre Jewelry prompting the store and seven to 10 nearby stores to be evacuated.

The fire chief said the substance was used 25 years ago to clean jewelry, but the government has since banned it. The jewelry store didn't know what to do with it, so it was kept in safe storage. The container containing the substance was knocked over Thursday afternoon.

The fire department could smell the chemical when it arrived at the scene and didn't go into the jewelry store. A Hazmat team also responded but was sent away because the spill was small.

A dead man and dangerous chemicals found in a Colorado Springs apartment. Authorities says the chemical is sodium cyanide. Normally used in gold mining, it is highly toxic and sometimes deadly. During this investigation, half a dozen patients were taken to the hospital as a safety precaution.

A Colorado Springs Fire paramedic, two AMR medics, a Springs police officer, and two workers from the complex had to be checked out.


"It's a little unnerving," one neighbor said.

Paramedics answered a call to the Fillmore Ridge Apartments and immediately found a man's lifeless body. Once police entered the apartment, they found the chemicals and quickly called the hazmat units. Several people who were exposed to the chemicals were decontaminated on scene.

ANDERSON — An affidavit made public Tuesday indicates that more than organic fuel was being formulated in a primitive lab recently discovered in Anderson near Hartwell Lake.

The affidavit says the owner of the property told state investigators that while he was trying to make biodiesel, he was also trying to make another chemical to sell, and was storing still others that apparently date from the 1990s.

The affidavit is part of a search warrant that the Independent Mail sought, and was provided, under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act.

The affidavit says that George Smolen, who owns the former Flex-A-Form on Frontage Road, told state environmental officials that he was trying to use sodium cyanide as a catalyst in a chemical reaction to form another chemical, but that it “did not perform as he had expected.”

Smolen also told investigators that he was working with another chemical, whose identity he was uncertain about, to try to extract crystals from it and sell them.

He told investigators that he had acquired some sodium cyanide — in 30-gallon and 50-gallon drums — to repackage it “into different quantities or amounts.”

A federal coordinator discovered the makeshift lab in late June while he was in the area to supervise the cleanup of an unrelated site nearby on Manse Jolly Road. Crews from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control have been working for a little more than a week to identify, catalog and clean up hundreds of chemicals found in three warehouses and seeping onto the property, which abuts the lake and stands only about 40 feet from Interstate 85.

Via Rail passengers travelling between Toronto and Montreal face delays until at least Tuesday afternoon after a CN freight train derailed near Cornwall on Monday.

Ashley Doyle, a Via Rail spokeswoman, said trains travelling between Toronto and Montreal are being rerouted through Ottawa and that some train service is being replaced with buses. The rerouting is adding about two hours’ travel time each way.

The derailment occurred at 9:50 a.m. Monday when 18 of the freight train’s cars went off the tracks. Six were carrying dangerous goods and one spilled about nine kilograms of sodium cyanide, said CN spokesman Jim Feeny.

“The spill is contained,” Feeny said, adding that a haz-mat team is on the scene disposing of the chemical.