Dear Bill and all Isogeochemists,

recently the fire department banned ALL gas cylinders inside the
laboratory building of the Council for Geoscience (Geological
Survey) in Pretoria. We had to move everything, flammable or not,
toxic or not, out into a kind of bomb shelter next to the building.
This included H2 (working gas for DH) Ar (carrier gas for ICP
AES/MS) and even N2 and O2. For carrier gases as well as for N2
(various applications) and O2 we had to undergo the rather
expensive exercise to have pipes installed from the storage area
into the labs. Working gases for the mass specs, of course, have
to be fetched in small portion glass bottles.

The resoning by the fire department was that in case of fire gas
cylinders (flammable or non-flammable gases) can be heated to
such an extent that explosion becomes inevitable and could
endanger firemen trying to search and rescue. An H2 bottle like
Tom Brenna's in the middle of the lab must be a real nightmare for
them.

It would be interesting to learn how these problems with fire
departments and Bill Showers' Eh&S are handled elsewhere in the
community.

Uwe



Dr. Uwe E. Horstmann
Council for Geoscience
P/Bag X112
0001 Pretoria
South Africa

Tel.: +27 12 841 1361
Fax.: +27 12 841 1278
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