제 목 : German Miners, Residents Exposed to Dioxin
일 자 : 1997년 05월
제공처 : Safety ＆ health
Twenty-three miners were exposed to dioxin as they exposed to
slow-burning coal-mine fire in Germany's Ruhr industrial area.
A subsequent investigation found that the run-off water used to
extinguish the fire contained a high concentration of the substance.
Workers were not issued prorective equipment or given any information
about the hazard and worked for several days to put out the fire and
clean up.The local population also was not informed of the hazard.
"The concentrations of dioxin in the affected workers' blood was no
higher that the rest of' the population," according to a representative
of the miners' occupational insurance company. Those exposed suffered
from headaches and skin rashes. The state prosecutor's office is currently
investigating the incident.
As reported in a previous EU Update, a l995 airport fire in Dusseldorf
that claimed l8 lives also released dioxin-containing smoke from burning
PVC, or polyvinyl chloride, into the air and dioxin-containing soot.
The soot had to be removed from the walls of the terminal before it
could be reopened to the public.
A major industrial disaster occurred in northern Germany in l953
when a malfunction in a BASF trichlorophenal plant exposed l53 workers
and surrounding villages to dioxin.
Dioxin is the name of a group of 75 carcinogenic chemicals produced
as a byproduct of chemicals processes that involve chlorine.
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