We can now make the initial response and keep the situation under control until the Gainesville Fire and Rescue gets here to help us out.. “Once a year, we open up the emergency response
Trang 18 Industry and Commercial
Response Teams
PCR CHEMICALS, GAINESVILLE, FLORIDA
John E Hudson is Manager of Safety and Emergency Preparedness at PCR Chem-icals, a small chemical manufacturing company that focuses on organosilicone and organofluorine chemistry “We make a lot of silicone intermediates such as the products in shampoo that make your hair shine, silicones that are beta blockers in pharmaceuticals, and a silicone that coats every Intel processor chip We’ve devel-oped a drug called ‘5 Flurouracell’ that is a basic chemotherapy building block, and
we manufacture specialty heavy fluids used in gyroscopes for the U.S Department
of Defense Basically, we run a diversified batch operation
“Most of our production is market driven People come to us and say, ‘Can you
do this?’ Our R&D department develops the product and tests it We put it in production if it is a viable product Other companies come to us and ask if we can manufacture a chemical product cheaper than they can do it for themselves Very often, we can because we already have the infrastructure that would support the product If they were to make it themselves, they would have to invest a great deal
of capital where we have already spent the necessary capital and can easily manu-facture these products
“We have had incidents here, one in 1991 and one in 1994, which prompted us
to coordinate an emergency response team as a first response team for incidents at the plant Our biggest problem can be a runaway reaction that results in a fire We can now make the initial response and keep the situation under control until the Gainesville Fire and Rescue gets here to help us out As a result of the ‘94 incident,
we purchased an industrial foam pumper with 1000 gallons of foam aboard which gives us a capability not only to fight a fire but to suppress vapors Many of our products are so toxic that this unit has really helped us with vapor suppression.”
On June 17, 1994 a release of trichlorosilane at PCR resulted in the evacuation
of 600 residents near the plant Hundreds more were advised to shelter in place, and 148 were treated and released from local hospitals The nearby airport was closed for four hours
“The emergency response team is purely voluntary and currently staffed by 42 persons with specific duties within our plant operations,” continues John Hudson
“Right now, we are in the process of training 17 persons to a Level 3 technician level We began training with the Florida State Fire College located in Ocala about
35 miles south of here Half of the team will be firefighters and half will be Haz Mat technicians, but all will be cross-trained so they can do any of the activities that are needed
Trang 2“Once a year, we open up the emergency response team for people who are interested in becoming volunteer members They are usually brought in through the decon team which is a good place to get them involved We will train them imme-diately through Level 1 and Level 2 Once a year, we offer a Level 3 course As they work with decon, they participate as support people for the Haz Mat group If they are interested in firefighting, we get them involved in some of the courses at the Fire College It is purely a voluntary program We don’t force anyone to go into any particular field If they want to stay with the decon team, that is no problem
We continually have spills that the decon team, actually called ‘Decon and Spill Response,’ responds to as well as decontamination drills
“We have found it very advantageous to have a response team We’ve had several near-misses that through quick response remained near misses We are a 7-day, 3-shifts-a-day operation, and all our evening and night shifts are trained in either the fire program or the Haz Mat program We have developed what we feel is an excellent relationship with the Gainesville Fire and Rescue Department
“When I came to work at PCR in 1993, I brought with me the good relationships
I had with the fire department I used to work in a teaching hospital at the University
of Florida, and we had so many fire alarms at the hospital that firefighters would respond several times a month When I joined PCR, our first column went bad shortly after my arrival When the firefighters responded, they were afraid to come
in the front gate Rick Lust, who was Haz Mat Engineer with the fire department
at the time, and I got together and decided that we should do some joint drills, preplans, and activities so the fire department was comfortable in coming out here
At the same time, we started working on our emergency response team here at PCR
“We had a group of five or six people who would respond prior to 1993, but they were not well trained They were mostly chemists and persons who operated the vessels We started a program to train everybody in the facility to the OSHA Level 1, the awareness level Next, we trained everyone who was interested to the operations level so they could take defensive actions in their own work areas At that point, we developed a training program that could be presented internally to train them for the Level 3, or technician level, under 29 CFR 1910.120 (9)(2)
“We trained our personnel as responders with 160 hours of training, and we purchased about 45 sets of bunker gear, SCBA, and more support equipment so we could handle anything on a first response basis We have some good fire training, but I don’t classify our personnel as firefighters All we can do is hold the line until the Gainesville Fire and Rescue gets here We make our equipment available to the fire department, and we train together at least four times a year so they are familiar with our equipment and we with theirs
“The PCR emergency response team can provide 40 people who are Level 3 Haz Mats who work with hazardous materials on a daily basis We have nine Ph.D chemists on the team so risk assessment is one of the things we do on the fly which really stymies most Haz Mat teams The expertise we have in dealing with chemicals gives us an advantage and gives the Gainesville Fire and Rescue a big advantage because they have our pagers and home phone numbers so they can call us any time
of the day or night If they need us to respond, we will If they need information,
Trang 3we will supply that information It’s been a great relationship for the two of us, and
we do a lot of training together I would certainly recommend that relationship, and
I do every time I get an opportunity
“PCR’s Level 3 responders have four, 4-hour refresher courses a year to keep them up to speed We have about six Level 4 persons, the specialist level, ‘plug and patch’ people, and we are continuously doing exercises for them Sometimes, damaged containers will come in and we will treat them as an exercise for the specialists
“We have people assigned to roles and trained to fill those particular roles For instance, a safety officer role in a fire department response can be filled by any command officer We have a Ph.D chemist to fill our safety officer role, and his designee is a Ph.D chemist as well They can analyze what is happening at an incident, and we have trained them through the incident command system so they recognize how this system works But they also bring Ph.D.-level knowledge of adverse effects as in a BLEVE (boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion) or a flashover We use the same system for decon While the fire department will assign
an officer to the decon team, we permanently appoint a deputy chief for decon He
or his designee will be available 24 hours a day.”
The PCR emergency response team has been available for off-site incidents in the past “It’s good for the community to have an asset like our team,” says Hudson,
“and we have responded off-site a few times in the past In October of 1996 a smaller chemical company here in Gainesville burned They had a lot of cyanides
so we supplied our truck with foam and about eight team members, four or five to operate the truck and the rest to provide oversight on the chemicals involved I was the incident commander of our unit and worked closely and communicated with the incident commander for the other chemical company
“My management gave me permission to take the team off-site for that incident and turned the response team over to me If a public emergency type of incident proves to be something we can’t handle, we won’t do it We’ve talked about a mutual aid agreement, but decided that was not particularly necessary We also talked about doing a memorandum of understanding, and I believe we are going to do that to address the issues of cost recovery and liabilities We don’t ask for any pay or liability coverage if we pump 600 gallons of foam, but we would like someone to reimburse us for the cost of the foam We make an incident-by-incident decision for off-site response For instance, a pentaborane disposal issue arose recently I was asked whether we could provide some people to operate as a backup for the effort I said absolutely not because my people have no training in new toxins like pentaborane We can help in some ways, but we are not going to respond to a pentaborane incident
“For a response at PCR we have material safety data sheets for all the raw materials and intermediates,” relates Hudson “Some chemicals go through several steps to move from a raw material to a finished good Depending on where it is in the process, we can pull information about that chemical We also have response information on our local area network Most of our people are pretty familiar with the chemicals in their areas; and we have people from every area of the plant involved
Trang 4with the response team including people from our laboratories and the R&D depart-ment We have plant-wide coverage so that in every area we have personnel familiar with what’s going on That expertise certainly helps a response That’s one of the reasons I have such great respect for the fire department When they leave the station, they never know what they are going to be running into so they have to be prepared for anything and everything
“Another PCR staff member and I are members of the Local Emergency Plan-ning Committee and are familiar with the enhanced hazard analysis that’s been done
in the community We have used the LEPC as sort of an information dissemination program Chief Williams was the LEPC chair for a couple of years I succeeded him as the chair and have held the job for five years The LEPC covers seven counties
in the northeast fire district, about 7000 square miles in total, and keeps all of our fire community aware of current issues The LEPC has been active in making training available to the rural and volunteer departments
“As a company, we’ve done exercises and participated in rural areas up to 65
to 70 miles from Gainesville, and we feel it is very important that we share our expertise We have leadership in the company that will allow us to do this, and we have people in the community structure like myself chairing local LEPC I am also
a member of the state emergency response commission, and a member of the Florida Fire Chiefs Association Emergency Services Coalition as well as a member of the Florida Transcaer Committee (Transportation Community Awareness Emergency Response sponsored by the Chemical Manufacturers Association and other national associations)
“Our LEPC has 35 members who range from persons who have been there since the committee began in 1987 to folks who came in the last year We have little turnover in our LEPC Once somebody comes on, he tends to stay for five to six years Other LEPCs in Florida have a pretty high turnover rate The most active committee is their membership committee, while with our LEPC, the public infor-mation committee is the most active group As an example, a week in late February was designated ‘Hazardous Materials Awareness Week’ in Florida Employers using extremely hazardous substances from the EPA list had to submit their Tier II reports
to the state capital in Tallahassee They must report to the state what chemicals they have on hand, where the chemicals are stored, volumes they have on hand, and the average daily volumes on hand The governor published a proclamation We sent it
to 44 communities and municipalities and they published it in their areas
“An incident occurred at the male correctional facility a year or so ago The Governor’s staff appointed me as an investigator through the LEPC Well, I learned
a lot doing it I learned I never want to do that again The difficulties of doing hazardous materials work are compounded by the difficulties of working in an environment such as a prison Something had permeated the air and made a lot of people sick We discovered in the investigation that one of the guards had released prisoner control gas It permeates clothing and stays with a person Prison officials did not do any decon They took all the injured to a hospital and contaminated all the ambulances and the hospital emergency room They wanted to do what was right, but they just didn’t know what was the right thing to do Of course, that
Trang 5information didn’t endear us to the prison superintendent until he learned that we could help him with good information and training We have done Level 1 and Level
2 training for their staff, and made arrangements for them to take the ‘Hazwoper’ course The head of the corrections department has now mandated such training for all his staff in Florida
“We are continuously working on making our chemical processes safer We had
a trichlorosilane incident in June of 1994 A hose ruptured and the product, which
is water reactive, ignited when the humidity that day reached about 95% If we had
an initial response capability for fire fighting at that time, we could have gone in there and resolved the incident in less than an hour As it turned out, the incident took about seven hours to get under control because the fire department waited until they could make a safe response before going in Presently, we use remote-activated valves Every set of valving and pumps in the plant can be shut down from another location That system was instituted because of that particular incident We have also poured a lot of concrete containment way, far beyond what the regulations require, so that if something should break we can keep it from going into the soil
or to the waterways
“We also have a number of suppression systems so that if anything that is not water reactive does give way, we can immediately flood it with water If it is water reactive, we have five foam systems with which we can lay a blanket of foam We use foam as much for vapor suppression as we do for fire suppression Many of our chemicals will liberate HCl (hydrochloric acid) vapor which can be very damaging
to mucous membranes and respiratory systems It important that we are able to suppress it.”
A fire department Haz Mat team is now required to have medical surveillance for response personnel How does that work within industry? “We require it,” continues Hudson “It’s part of our response plan Before you go into any activity, you have your blood pressure and heart rate checked They are checked again when you come out Every month when we have an emergency response team meeting,
we do checks If we have an exposure during an incident, we send that person or persons to our company doctor Only one person has had to have blood gases drawn
I think it was such a bad experience that no one will ever again say that they were exposed We have had one of our response team members go to a community college
to become an emergency medical technician We hope to send another one this summer as well as one in the fall, so we will have at least three EMTs One person
on site is a paramedic and can make the initial medical response We are working with the Gainesville Fire/Rescue Department on a first responder course which covers basic life support Twenty people will go through that course We are trying
to get ourselves in a position where we can take care of ourselves and then help the fire department if they need help
“We keep about 20 Level A suits and 35 to 40 Level B suits on hand We only use them for a specified period before we paint a big ‘T’ on the backs of them and they become training suits We supply a lot of support to the fire department because their resources are usually limited to half a dozen or so suits One of the areas we cover in our Level 3 course is how to dress It sounds rather funny, but it is very
Trang 6important to know how to get in and out of protective clothing without damaging
it If we have an event that requires a Level A dress out, we use disposable suits because it makes more sense than trying to decon permanent Level A clothing
“We have quite a few chemical computer programs such as Sax’s Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials For most of our emergency response we use CAMEO because that is what the fire department uses Using the same program prevents a lot of confusion We had looked at the possibility of ordering the CHARM module which is supposedly one of the more sophisticated programs, but the more
we thought about it the more we realized that it was not a good choice since the fire department doesn’t have it If we are going to interface with them, we need to
do what they are doing We have several laptops that have CAMEO on them so we can go off-site to incident command and help the fire department with modeling and tasks like that The Gainesville Fire and Rescue Department is getting ready to put a cellular FAX machine on their Haz Mat response vehicle which will give us the ability to get information at the command post
“We have also used ALOHA (a segment of CAMEO) and it was pretty accurate
As a matter of fact, we were so pleased with it that we are going to use CAMEO and ALOHA for our dispersion modeling under the Clean Air Act 112R I was at the Chemical Process Safety meeting in New Orleans recently, and the companies were all talking about what program they were going to use such as SAFER, FAST, and CHARM These are $15,000 to $35,000 proprietary software systems I men-tioned CAMEO and ALOHA Others responded that CAMEO and ALOHA are not very sophisticated programs I replied that may be, but our responders are using CAMEO and ALOHA and it is very important that we are able to interface with them on a basis they can understand Some of the people there said their first responder groups used CAMEO and maybe that’s what they needed to use I urged them to think about it and talk to their responders to help them make a decision That’s one of the reasons we started using the same terminology as fire departments
It makes sense for us to converse with them in a way they can understand and we can understand We feel very comfortable with our relationship to the fire depart-ment It is a positive thing and I think it is good for the community Within the seven county area, the Gainesville Fire and Rescue Department, PCR, Inc., PSC in White Spring, the Hamilton County Fire Department, the former Proctor and Gamble pulp mill in Buckeye, and the Perry Fire Department, all use the same terminology.”
TEAM-1 ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES, HAMILTON, ONTARIO, CANADA
The July 1997 fire and toxic cloud at Plastimet Recycling in Hamilton, where at least 400 tons of plastic burned and released gases raised serious questions about the dangers to people who live or work near the 630 waste transfer sites in the
Contact: John E Hudson, Manager of Safety and Emergency Preparedness, PCR Chemical Company, P.O Box 1466, Gainesville, FL 32602-1466; 904-376-8246, Ext 284; 904-373-7503 (Fax).
Trang 7province of Ontario The fire burned for 77 hours, and an estimated 5,548,000 gallons of water were poured on the incident site A commercial response contractor was on site recovering contaminated water for 144 hours after the start of the blaze The toxic substances that were released into the air included dioxin, any of a group of compounds known as dibenzo-p-dioxins When tested on laboratory ani-mals, dioxins were found to be among the more toxic synthetic chemicals having
an oral LD50 of 0.022 mg/kg in male rats and 0.045 mg/kg in female rats Dioxin became widely known as a potential danger after the herbicide 2,4,5-T exploded at
a manufacturing plant in Seveso, Italy years ago Many workers were exposed, and vegetation in the town was destroyed The workers developed chloracne, a disfig-uring skin condition characterized by the appearance of blackheads, cysts, follicu-litis, and scars
The small Missouri town of Times Beach was evacuated and eventually aban-doned by the EPA in 1983 when high levels of dioxin were found on unpaved city streets The accumulation of contaminated oil which had been spread on the streets
to control the dust caused Times Beach to become a ghost town Dioxin is known
to be a carcinogen The Firefighters Handbook of Hazardous Materials lists its toxicity for lungs and toxicity for skin as high, potentially causing permanent injury
or death For the Disaster-Atmosphere category, dioxin is judged a level 4, with a cautionary statement that “many factors influence this point, such as degree and area of confinement, air and wind currents, type and scope of involvement, etc and
is a relative value only.”
One sample, taken from a stream of wet ash flowing from the main part of the Plastimet fire, contained 25,000 ppt toxic equivalent of dioxin Another sample, sooty residue in a stream of water running across a nearby street, contained 7600 ppt Any area with dioxin concentrations higher than 1000 ppt is considered unfit for industrial use according to provincial guidelines In high amounts, dioxins may
be linked to medical problems including cancer, suppression of the immune system, and reproductive problems
About 200 firefighters fought the fire at Plastimet About half have reported health problems including respiratory difficulties, nasal and throat irritation, skin rashes, eye infections and fatigue Despite their protective gear, many had skin peel off their hands and feet The International Association of Fire Fighters demanded
a provincial investigation stating, “More than two months after the fire, many of the firefighters at the scene continue to experience the ill effects of toxic exposure
… the Plastimet fire has raised serious safety concerns not only for the Hamilton fire fighters, but also for the citizens of the community … exposure to burning polyvinyl chlorides (PVCs) raises the real possibility that the fire fighters and citizens will be stricken with serious illness in the future.”
Firefighters are really “burned,” in more ways than one, with the politics that have gone on since the fire They are worried that chemicals such as dioxin and benzene, both of which cause cancer, could cause drastic health problems as years
go by and the Plastimet fire is all but forgotten The fire department has refused
to pay for liver and kidney tests to ensure that vital organs have not been damaged, and the Ontario Health Insurance Plan usually does not pay the $350 required for such exams The Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers informed
Trang 8Hamilton-area physicians that such tests would be appropriate only if firefighters were showing visible signs of organ problems The fire department has said it will pay only for tests sought by doctors The firefighters are left in a Catch-22 position They have no baseline medical data after the Plastimet fire to judge whether the fire damaged certain organs So far, no medical follow-up has been authorized for the firefighters
Other pollutants at the Plastimet fire with levels that rose sharply and then fell off were carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, hydrogen chloride (which mixes with moisture in the air or in a person’s lungs to form hydrochloric acid), vinyl chloride and benzene At its peak, hydrogen chloride in the air was almost six times the accepted government standard The vinyl chloride peaked at 2.5 times the provincial standard for air quality, but the standard is set based on long-term exposure, and temporary, short-term exposure to higher levels is not a risk according to a report released by the Ministry of Environment and Energy The readings for benzene peaked at 250 ppb; the normal range in the Hamiliton area for benzene is 1 to 8 ppb Mitchell Gibbs is manager of emergency services at TEAM-1 Environmental Services Inc located in Hamilton, Ontario This commercial spill response contrac-tor provides Canada-wide incident response, contingency planning, and Haz Mat and confined space training In Ontario, TEAM-1 has dispatch centers located in Hamilton, Burlington, Toronto, and London About 30 minutes after the start of the Plastimet fire, TEAM-1 was asked by the Hamilton-Wentworth Region to respond
“Our main goal was to recover the water runoff that was deemed toxic,” says Gibbs “Responders put 210 million liters of water on the fire It was estimated that 10% of that was lost through vaporization leaving a balance of 189 million liters Fifty percent of that went into the storm sewer system and allowed for direct discharge into the harbor The other 50% went into the sanitary sewer system and
to the sewer plant The amount recovered compared to the amount put on the fire wasn’t very good The excess was a concern for a lot of people Some of the streets were under two feet of water; the railroad track lines were covered Obviously, the runoff water carried a lot of toxins: dioxins, lead, zinc, chrome, magnesium — a lot of heavy metals
“The site was an industrial location A smelter had been onsite for the past 50
or 60 years and had been abandoned for ten years The location was deemed a highly contaminated site even before it was rented to a person who recycled poly-vinyl chloride The exact amount of polypoly-vinyl chloride on site is still under question The site had numerous violations under the fire code, and the company that operated the PVC recycling was approximately $850,000 in arrears on taxes A lot of issues relate to that fire A lot of people claim it never should have happened A lot of questions surfaced about how the fire was handled and how much hydrochloric acid fallout occurred The big question is, ‘shouldn’t there have been an evacuation?’
“The alarm was called in by a fire department tactical unit out doing building inspections They came around a corner and discovered the fire, which was called
in as a ‘still’ alarm (common term for when an active fire is found, not when a fire
is called into the station) Immediately, trucks were dispatched from a station two kilometers away Response time would have been less than two minutes Within 10
to 12 minutes, however, the entire facility was fully engulfed in flames Responders
Trang 9suspect a carrying agent accelerated the fire; adapters and beams could have been contaminated with a carrying agent such as zinc dust that could have caused the fire to travel so quickly Off-duty fire department personnel were called in to respond
At that point, it was declared a major fire with environmental impact The ministry
of environment, the ministry of health, all regulatory agencies, the mayor, and all politicians responded
“Advice was given on how to handle the fire,” remembers Gibbs “At that point, the fire department made an external attack, no personnel were allowed inside the building It became a ‘surround and drown fire,’ a common term familiar to all the agencies involved
“All two acres of the site were involved Firefighters placed a number of aerial trucks around the area and flooded the site The building on the site collapsed on the PVC which led to a lot of problems The firefighters were not able to direct water at the piles of PVC Heavy equipment was eventually brought in to remove pieces of the roof from tightly wound vinyl and other PVC products The fire was very intense and stubborn
“The fire service was taking advice and recommendations from numerous agen-cies such as the ministry of the environment, the directors of health, and the director
of emergency preparedness They determined that evacuation wasn’t necessary the night of the fire However, three days after the start of the fire, an evacuation was ordered because of a temperature inversion which would not allow the toxic plume
to escape and because of the amount of toxic flooding Over 77 hours, the plume migrated approximately 30 kilometers affecting many areas Initially, the wind kept switching First, the plume headed south, but during that first night, we experienced
at least 10 to 15 wind switches at a minimum of 180° each including some that changed 360° Such movement caused the plume to flood the command post with fallout You could never get a safe position
“TEAM 1 was on site to recover the toxic waste It was a massive task utilizing the services of numerous carriers, but Laidlaw Environmental was the main responder At one point we had 26 large-scale industrial vacuum trucks on site trying
to recover water at different points Luckily, the main area collection point was a low-lying area on the street It probably covered a good acre Had it been on a hillside, we would never have been able to recover the water The decision to pick
up the contaminated water was made by the regional sewer people because it was obvious that any water in this known toxic site would have elevated levels of heavy metals and hydrocarbons Knowing that polyvinyl chloride was involved, officials decided right away that some form of environmental recovery would be necessary
“The Regional Municipality of Hamilton does not clean up spills in their area They contract with private industry and oversee the cleanup done by private industry TEAM 1 Environmental has a contract with the city of Hamilton to respond to chemical spills and similar incidents We knew immediately that hydrochloric acid and dioxin would be the products of PVC combustion These were the two main concerns at the Plastimet Recycling fire Dioxins, of course, were a huge concern The problem that we ran into was that dioxin test results were not available for 48 hours from the point of sampling whereas hydrochloric acid results were
Trang 10immedi-ately available The fire started at 7:30 p.m and through on-site analysis of the waste water, we knew by 2:00 a.m that the water was toxic The Ministry of Environment, for whatever reason, could not respond with certain high-end equip-ment until 5:30 a.m.”
Mitchell Gibbs was asked if TEAM 1 members have been called on to respond
to a chemical agent like a poison gas or a biological substance such as anthrax or typhus “We have a couple of pathological biological laboratories in Ontario that retain our services A spill there would be treated no differently from a chemical spill such as chlorine or ammonia The same type of suits would be worn with the same types of precautions, same manpower, same chemical setup, and the same system The suits we have would protect us against most of these agents, and we have a careful monitoring program for the specific agent we might be working with
In 14 years of doing this type of work, I’ve only had two occurrences involving an unknown We have a workplace hazardous materials information system in Canada Anything that’s in an industrial plant has to have a material safety data sheet attached
to it or in an accessible place Very rarely do you get called to a drum that’s in the middle of the road with nobody around.”
When called to the scene of a hazardous materials incident, TEAM 1 personnel make use of a standard operational guidance that was designed after the National Fire Protection Association Standards 471 (Recommended Practice for Responding
To Hazardous Materials Incidents) and 472 (Standards of Professional Competence
of Responders To Hazardous Materials Incidents) Mitchell Gibbs functions in the role of the incident commander, and Debbie Vanderlip is the health and safety coordinator
“Upon arrival, we report to a pre-assigned command post to gather information
At the point that the two of us agree we have sufficient information, we would establish a plan of attack for the situation Debbie would be responsible for selecting personal protective equipment and protocol From that point we would enter the site to confirm what has been reported to us, exit the site, and report the findings
to the overall incident commander From that I would either readjust my protocol
or form a new protocol, depending on the nature of the incident We subsequently re-enter and mitigate the situation
“At any time during that process, we have provisions to alter our original plans based on our findings If we get in there and find an additional agent involved, we can remove ourselves At the same time, if we find that the air quality or the risk level is less, we can degrade our suiting level Downgrading our suits can be very important The very last thing you want to do is to work in an encapsulated suit needlessly If you can get the incident response down to a hard hat and safety glasses,
it is much easier to do work at such a site, but that can only be arranged when you have accurate findings and accurate air quality readings.”
TEAM-1 Environmental Services, Inc provides Canada-wide emergency response to government, industry, and transportation agencies and businesses Spe-cifically, they handle tractor trailer/tanker truck roll-overs, Haz Mat spill response, Level A–D chemical handling, hydrocarbon spill cleanup, high hazard tank cleanout, radioactive incidents, explosive materials control, high angle/confined space work,