By Richard T. Cartwright, PE, CHMM, (IHMM, AHMP and APICS) Fellow
The saying, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is more than a cliché. It is a reminder that we must constantly be learning from the past. Here’s a look back at major historical events that happened today in the world of hazardous materials.
October 11, 2000
Black coal slurry sludge (300 million gallons) was released when an impoundment dam collapsed in Kentucky. Over 100 miles of waterway was impacted. The release cost $78 million dollars to clean up.
October 11, 1995
Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland (American scientists) and Paul Crutzen (Dutch scientist) won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work warning that CFCs are eating away Earth’s ozone layer. Crutzen showed that nitrogen oxides are important in the natural balance of ozone in the upper atmosphere. Molina and Rowland established that there was a threat to the ozone layer from man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were then used in spray cans. This was more than a decade before the Antarctic ozone hole was discovered. This Nobel Prize winning research created the international response to control emissions of CFCs.
October 11, 1945
Robert Gale, American physician, was born. He pioneered bone marrow transplantation. Gale was internationally recognized for treating radiation victims in the Soviet Union after the Chernobyl disaster and also in Brazil following widespread accidental radiation exposure.
October 11, 1939
Albert Einstein’s letter was delivered to President Roosevelt urging him to rapidly develop American atomic bomb production capability.
October 11, 1938
Games Slayter and John Thomas at Owens Corning received a patent for the manufacture of glass wool. While working on an unrelated experiment, a jet of compressed air struck a stream of molten glass, which produced fine glass fibers. The glass wool manufacturing process was later refined by using steam, to make glass fiber material thin enough for commercial fiberglass insulation.
October 11, 1884
Friedrich Bergius, German chemist, was born. He invented the high-pressure process to convert coal dust and hydrogen directly into gasoline and lubricating oils without isolating the intermediate products. Bergius succeeded, during distillation of coal, in forcing hydrogen under high pressure to combine chemically with coal, transforming more carbon from coal into oils than is possible with conventional distillation.
October 11, 1793
A yellow fever epidemic struck Philadelphia. Eventually, 5,000 people died. Victims often become jaundiced (hence, term “yellow” fever), as their liver and kidneys cease to function normally. The yellow fever virus, like malaria, is carried and transferred by mosquitoes. Today, vaccination prevents yellow fever although 20,000 people still die annually from the disease.
Historical hazardous materials management events are posted 365 days a year at this LinkedIn discussion group.
