Published: January 15th, 2013 at 9:40 am ET
|
AP:
40 Students in Hospital After Tenn. Gas Leak
[...] Hospital spokesman Craig Boerner said Tuesday that 49 students were eventually brought in by parents and 40 of them were admitted for 23 hours of oxygen treatment.
Workers found a hole in a heating unit that serves the central part of the school. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas produced by combustion.
“A carbon monoxide detector went off that caused concern,” [Dr. Donna Seger, medical director for the Tennessee Poison Center] said.
Drexel Preparatory Academy, a Nashville charter school, sent children home early Monday after some got sick with flu-like symptoms and a carbon monoxide detector went off.
“Maybe it was something in the school that was going on. We know the flu has been running rampant across the southeast, so we made the decision we would close the school at half day,” [Drexel principal Cheryl Bowman] said.
After students were sent home for the day, school administrators received a call from Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital.
“We got several calls from Vanderbilt Hospital saying several of our students had come in and they had high levels of carbon monoxide,” according to Bowman.
Carbon Monoxide vs Natural Gas
Published: January 15th, 2013 at 9:40 am ET
|
sending...
POOR BABIES pray for the children
Markww
Report Comment
Natural gas is almost odorless– this event was the cause of odorfactants being added to public use natural.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion
Report Comment
The London School explosion is a textbook example of good-ol-boy politics at work protecting the people. Some good came out: Texas mandated stinky mercaptans in natural gas.
Some city gas services were already adding extra stink to their product and took *some* care in running pipe. A dead customer is an unprofitable customer. The new Texas laws just made the practice common across the U.S.
The New London School had plenty of money – there was no need to look for alternatives to oil-fired boilers (common at the time) or using city gas. Instead, someone's brother-in-law palmed a few bucks by getting the school board to buy waste gas from the local gasoline refinery instead. Bonus: they saved even more by avoiding the costly installation of service pipe by the better-qualified city gas suppliers.
Mercaptans never were and are still not required for waste gas because they permanently banned its use decades *later* for heating occupied spaces.
Who was eventually held accountable for the death of 300 children? Nobody's brother-in-law. No school board members or politicians for the odd choice of heating. Not the school district nor Texas. Even Parade Gas (supplied the waste gas 'service') and whoever designed the school's piping got off the hook.
Sorry – just another extremely unlikely design basis issue.
Report Comment
Carbon monoxide damages the brain and children are more vulnerable than adults.
Report Comment