The first day of classes proved more eventful when the Chemistry building was evacuated because of an ammonia gas leak. Suffolk County and campus safety teams responded immediately to the emergency and the situation was resolved a couple hours later.
‘At 11:05 [a.m.] we received a call that there was an ammonia type fume,’ said Doug Little, interim chief of University Police. ‘The cylinder holding ammonia may have had a valve that was loose.’
Ammonia solutions with more than 50% ammonia are classified as a Toxic Inhalation Hazard. It is a corrosive alkaline solution, which will burn at contact whether swallowed, inhaled, or absorbed.
Many of the chemistry faculty members waited outside while the problem was being solved.
‘The ammonia tank brought a leak to the fifth floor,’ said chemistry professor Robert Kerber, ‘Someone pulled the fire alarm and we had to evacuate.’
‘I can’t remember anything like this happening [before],’ said chemistry professor Frank Fowler. ‘We will probably have to come up with new policies when these kinds of things happen.’
‘I got a call from Professor [Daniel] Raleigh from the sixth floor because the service chase smelled like ammonia,’ said Director of Laboratories Alvin Silverstein. ‘Then, Professor [Philip] Johnson from the fifth floor called to tell ammonia from the tank was leaking. The smell was so strong that as I reached the fifth floor I didn’t even open the door.’
‘The only way to evacuate a building is via fire alarm,’ Silverstein said. ‘We don’t have a P.A. system. If we did have a P.A. system, we would be able to properly inform everyone of what was going on and tell them which exits to evacuate from.’
Silverstein was the one who pulled the fire alarm.
‘I called the University Police, and the safety specialists were all here within a short time,’ Silverstein said. ‘They were all over in about five to 10 minutes. I pulled the alarm at their request, but the only problem with pulling the alarm was that the alarm shuts down most of the fume hoods and air handlers which supply fresh air to the buildings.’
Campus and some local fire marshals were well geared to enter the toxic gas environment.
‘Our building manager, Mike Teta, gave them the master key and a large crescent wrench with the thought that the main valve wasn’t fully closed,’ Silverstein said. ‘We didn’t know what to expect.’
‘They took pictures and identified that one of the fittings cracked near the gas regulator,’ Silverstein said. ‘The big mystery is why it cracked. We speculate that someone banged into it and after some time it slowly got larger.’
The tank had a 100-pound capacity, approximately, and carried both liquid and gaseous ammonia. Ammonia becomes a liquid at low pressures, and so the upper part of the tank carried gas and the lower part carried liquid. There were two openings, one for each state of ammonia as needed.
‘Some experiments need liquid ammonia in a very concentrated form. It’s not what you go out and buy at the store,’ Silverstein said.
For the future, current effective safety regulations will need to be enforced even more. ‘We need to remind people to shut the main valve when chemicals are not being used,’ Silverstein said. ‘And also chemicals that have not been used in three years need to be disposed, and the University is very generous to cover the cost of this.’ In this case, the ammonia tank did not belong to any active research group, and was not being used for research purposes as intended.
The Environmental Health and Safety Department is working on removing the tank and its contents. The tanks are usually returned to the manufacturing company, while the chemicals are disposed of at a separate facility. Stony Brook has a contract with Triumvirate Environmental for the disposal of wastes.
The tank is currently being stored in a walk-in fume head till further action. ‘It’s being checked multiple times to see if it is free of leaks,’ Silverstein said.
