- Hello Jeff - This just came in via the Cornell West Nile
Virus email list. If true, this is just utterly so amazing.
-
- Patricia
-
-
- At 09:28 AM 3/20/2003 -0500, Lois Levitan wrote:
- New York Times -- March 20, 2003 (Associated Press)
-
- COLUMBUS, Ohio - A package containing the West Nile virus
exploded on Tuesday night at a Federal Express building here. Fifty workers
were evacuated.
-
- Fire officials said dry ice used to preserve tissue samples
with live virus might have caused the shoebox-size package to burst at
the FedEx office near Port Columbus International Airport. The package,
from the Ohio Department of Health and being sent to a researcher at the
University of Texas, held brain and kidney tissue from a bird that had
tested positive for the virus, said Jay Carey, spokesman for the health
department.
-
- The virus was live but the samples were frozen and unlikely
to become airborne, Mr. Carey said.
-
- "The risk to employees or first responders is still
very low," he said. "Only people with open wounds who would come
in direct contact with the sample material would be at any risk of infection."
-
- Workers were allowed back into the building after four
hours. "I think everyone's anxiety level is kind of high," Sgt.
Brent Mull of the police said.
-
- http://libpub.dispatch.com/cgi-bin/documentv1?
- DBLIST=cd03&DOCNUM=12374&TERMV=5488:4:5492:4:5496:5:
-
-
- Could anyone offer insight into (a) accuracy of this
report, (b) risk from this type of exposure,
- (c) risks of this kind of explosion?
-
-
- Kevin J. McGowan, Ph.D. wrote:
-
- a) No clue.
-
- b) Probably minimal
-
- c) This kind of explosion can happen easily. If you put
dry ice in a sealed plastic container, it will explode. The force of the
explosion is related to the strength of the container, up to a point. Obviously
if you have a strong enough container it will hold the building gas pressure
in. If not, it explodes. I had friends in grad school who used to destroy
hanging ashtrays in the hallways (remember those times?) by putting in
them a small, screw-top nalgene bottle containing a hunk of dry ice. The
nalgene bottle was pretty strong, and held in enough pressure to knock
the ashtray off the wall when it gave way. That is enough force to hurt
you if you are right next to it, but not if you were 30 feet away. It makes
a loud noise, though, and can scare the bejeezus out of you. If the dry
ice was in a sealed plastic bottle with the tissue, the explosion would
fling the stuff all over, but this isn't shrapnel, and it isn't a real
explosive, so the damage should be minimal (although the mess could be
pretty big).
-
- Kevin J. McGowan, Ph.D.
- Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology
- 159 Sapsucker Woods Road
- Ithaca, NY 14850
- 607/254-2432
- fax 607/254-2111
- kjm2@cornell.edu
- http://birds.cornell.edu/crows/
-
-
- Comment
-
- From Vince
- 3-21-3
-
- Jeff, I found this article very interesting....as I've
Had Personal Experience with transporting "hazardious" substances
through the airlines.
-
- I worked briefly for a messenger service that had as
a client a "Blood" lab that on a weekly/daily
- basis would ship bloodwork via airlines to its other
lab in another state...
-
- Because they lacked the sophisticated equiptment, ie;
expensive, to complete the analysis here...
- I would arrive on time To pick up the shipments which
more often then not weren't ready.
-
- The lab workers would frantically "cram" the
bloodwork into "bubble wrap' dump them into cardboard boxes..,with
a layer of dry ice below and on top..,cramming in the contents and then
sealing with plastic tape.
-
- More often then not these were "regular" blood
samples or not known to contain "infectious" bloodwork such as
HIV, Hep C, etc. BUT...because the boxes contained Dry Ice...and it had
to be a specific amount weight-wise...they had to be labeled as containing
"hazardous" material. Again, this was not because of the bloodwork
but because of the dry ice...which, as it warmed, gave off carbon dioxide.
-
- The other more Infectious materials were usually in a
sturdy plastic...sometimes metal container,
- sealed, with hinges and locking clips, with the contents
clearly marked as 'infectious' and what type of sample it was...such as
Hep C, Aids, and other hazardous items.
-
- Why Anyone... especially a lab...would ship live virus
- even frozen in a shoebox size container containing dry ice unless of
course it was metal or very sturdy plastic with hinges and locking lid
clasps - is beyond me!
-
- It's highly possible that the container "exploded"
possibly due to the dry ice but another contributing factor could have
been FedEx's conveyor belt system. This package actually should have been
hand
- processed - not because of its content but because of
its size in relation to the other freight.
-
- It also sounds like from the report...that the parcel
didn't really contain enough dry ice, weight-wise, to be marked 'hazardous'.
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