r/hazmat • u/Zenmedic • 22h ago
News A good case study in "How everything can go wrong", but without a catastrophic end.
For those who are unfamiliar with picric acid, it's one of the substances that is on a very short list of "Things that make me really nervous". It's really, really unstable when dry and has enough power to cause unfathomable damage. The Halifax Explosion was caused by a ship with picric acid aboard.
In this situation, mislabeled packaging (whether intentional or not, that is yet to be determined) caused a pallet containing picric acid to sit at a storage facility, unknown to the occupants, for 10 days. As part of a disposal shipment, many more precautions should have been taken, and it's even scarier to know that this was on the road at some point with nobody being aware of the risks. One pothole could have levelled a city block.
As a responder (who specialized in explosive and radiological substances), walking up to this is what my nightmares are made of. It's not in a place that's designed for it, nobody knows how it has been handled or stored, how old it is or the overall condition of it.