Making your home safer by recognizing and properly storing household hazardous materials.
Household hazardous materials are common everyday products sold in your neighborhood supermarket. Used properly and for their intended use, these items are safe. But when mixed by the violence of Earthquake or fire, these items can become very volatile and can cause serious and even death. In the following page or two, we will try to explain these materials and give general suggestions on proper storage. Hopefully following these guidelines will minimize possible harm to your family and home.
We are going to use the following three categories to group all hazardous materials:
FLAMMABLE MATERIALS:
Paint
Wood Finishes
Thinners
Solvents
Gasoline
Most Automotive Related Cleaners & Products
Etc.
All of the above items can be ignited by spark or flame and can easily start a fire if they have been spilled or the container is broken by dropping to the floor in an earthquake. Most flammable materials can cause harm if inhaled or absorbed through the skin. Flammable materials should be stored in proper containers and in special storage cabinets away from any sources of sparks or flame. If at all possible it is recommended that all flammable materials be stored outside of your living area, away for your residence or business. It is also recommended, and usually mandated by local law, to keep a proper fire extinguisher in close proximity to the flammable material.
CAUSTICS:
Pool Cleaning Chemicals
Ammonia
Bleach
Drain Cleaners
Etc.
Any of the above items can cause burns to your skin and if not taken care of quickly can permanently damage the contacted skin. Eye irritation and damage is a special consideration with these types of chemicals. Wear goggles, rubber gloves and protective clothing when handling these items. Any contact with your skin or eyes should be immediately flushed with large amounts of water. Then it is recommended to see your doctor immediately to determine if any lasting problems will occur. STORE AMMONIA AND BLEACH SEPARATELY. MIXING OF THESE CHEMICALS MAKES CHLORINE GAS, THAT IS HIGHLY TOXIC. Please remember that alone these chemicals seem harmless, but when mixed they can turn instantly caustic and extremely dangerous.
TOXICS
Pesticides
Insecticides
Etc.
These items should be used only with the most possible care. These items were designed to kill living organisms. So you can only imagine what they can do to you. These items must be properly stored in case of earthquake or fire. (Please refer to manufactures suggestions on proper storage) Childproof latches and locked cabinets can keep these poisons from spilling during an earthquake.
General Rules for Proper Storage of Household Hazardous Materials
Safe and proper storage of hazardous materials can reduce the problems caused by Earthquakes and Fires in your home or at your workplace.
• Store hazardous materials outside of your living space
• Use only approved safety containers for gasoline and solvents.
• Explosion-proof metal storage cabinets are a good solution for storage of flammable materials.
• Store all containers on low shelves to minimize breakage
• Secure stored containers to further minimize breakage
• Store containers in a rigid structure (Sturdy Cabinet or Crate) to minimize crushing or breaking of the containers.
• Store all hazardous materials away for any source of flames, sparks or hot surfaces.
• Store incompatible materials (is. Bleach & Ammonia) in separate locations
• PLEASE REFER TO ALL MANUFACTURES LITERATURE REGARDING PROPER AND SAFE STORAGE OF THEIR MATERIALS. ALL MATERIALS DIFFER IN STORAGE TECHNIQUES AND ALL RULES MUST BE ADHERED TO BY THE LETTER.
• Be an informed and aware consumer. Read all the labels.
• Only buy what you will need. Do not store a hazardous material if you don’t have to.
• Use only one container (The Original) to avoid mixing unknown products together.
• Consider purchasing safer materials that can do the same job as their caustic counterparts.
CLEANUP PROCEDURES
DO NOT CLEAN UP THE SPILL – Unless you know that it can be done safely.
USE THE PROPER SAFETY EQUIPMENT AND CLOTHING TO PROPERLY CLEAN UP THE SPILL. CONSULT THE MANUFACTURER.
CONTAIN AND REMOVE THE SPILL – DON’T JUST WASH IT TO YOUR NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE. USE TOWELS OR KITTY LITTER TO SOAK UP THE LIQUID AND PLACE ALL ITEMS IN A PROPER CONTAINER FOR DISPOSAL.
PLEASE CONSULT YOUR LOCAL HEALTH OR FIRE DEPARTMENT REGARDING PROPER DISPOSAL AND CLEANUP OF HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS. SOME CITIES HAVE SPECIAL PROGRAMS IN PLACE TO DISPOSE OF HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS.
Eliminate the Hazard
• Buy only what you will need for the job you are performing
• Look for safer less hazardous substitutes.
• Instead of using flammable paints and varnishes, use water based paints. This helps aid in cleanup and disposal.
• Baking soda and vinegar solutions can substitute for stronger more hazardous cleaners on some jobs.
MORE INFORMATION
For further information, contact your local fire department, health department or O.E.S. – Office of Emergency Services. They will be more that happy to furnish you with all the literature and information you will need to minimize your problems with hazardous materials.
Reference Materials and Statistics where found at the following sites:
O.E.S. – http://www.oes.ca.gov/
American Red Cross – http://www.redcross.org/
F.E.M.A. – http://www.fema.gov/
Another note from Jim:
I’d like to thank Brent for supplying the valuable information listed above. Read it, and please read it again! I try to relate to things in the least technical aspect as possible, and in place of that I like to insert examples of why this information is important to you.
It is important to you because of the misfortunate accidents that others have suffered, because of not taking the above listed advice! What can you expect to suffer if you don’t clean out that garage and SAFEGUARD those over the counter hazardous materials?
In the past 24 years I’ve had to respond to the following emergency calls generated from hazardous materials incorrectly stored at home, in the following order of frequency:
1) FIRES
2) EXPLOSIONS
3) POISONING (Children are the most common victims.)
4) ALLERGIC REACTIONS
5) BURNS
6) INJURIES TO THE EYES (Just a reminder, you only get two and many of the people I’ve had to transport to the hospital now have only one!)
You wanna save time.
You don’t read the directions.
You don’t wear the proper protective clothing or eye protection.
You use a product in the wrong temperature range.
You don’t put chemicals away when you’re finished.
Mark isn’t going to like this but it proves a point. A few years back, Mark had a beautiful 22-foot express cruiser boat on a trailer in front of his house. Mark had been doing some detail work reapplying teak to the woodwork and swim platform.
Mark forgot about a teak soaked rag he had been working with that had been left on the carpeting on the flooring near the engine cover. The rag sat in direct sunlight until the fumes mixed with heat, caused a spontaneous combustion and fire. Either Mark, or Lisa was home at the time and quickly extinguished the fire. Left unattended with 60 gallons of fuel on board, Mark’s boat could have been a blazing inferno if 10 more minutes had passed.
Every action has a reaction! This action almost ended with tragic results.
Take the action to Properly and Safely work with hazardous materials or cleaners, and you’ll prevent the risk of these tragedies:
Like coming home to see cops and firemen in front of your house, with an ambulance leaving carrying your 4 year old child who is in critical condition from swallowing paint cleaning materials. Your wife or husband is hysterical as you hear the words we frequently hear: ” I only took my eyes off him for a second!”
You splash a caustic pool chemical into your eyes and suddenly your world goes black. You don’t know what to do and you panic…the damage is permanent.
The Cops call your place of business and tell you that you no longer have a ski boat on a trailer in front of your house. The chemicals left in the interior caught fire and now you own 20 feet of melted fiberglass. Your insurance wasn’t current? Oops!
Your family and you return home from a week long vacation in the mountains. No phones, no pagers, no messages, no nothing! You pull onto your street and you get the feeling that something is different. You see yellow caution tape draped around all your trees and mailbox, blocking off the entrance to your driveway. But where is the house?
All you see is the standing chimney, the foundation, and the bathtub where the bathroom used to be. Several neighbors rush towards your car to give you the bad news regarding the 5-gallon gas can that hadn’t been properly sealed and left next to the Gas water heater!
It had taken the firefighters 2 hours to get the fire out! They had tried to contact you, but you hadn’t told family or neighbors where you could be reached, and you didn’t fill out a VACATION HOUSE CHECK REQUEST with your local police department. (Real life story folks!)
See how easy our “reactions” control the end of what “actions” take place in our lives?
All of these situations are real. Thousands are worse in outcome. Thousands aren’t. Some ended in senseless death. Many didn’t, but why did they have to happen at all?
I know I know, I get in a hurry too. Back when I worked as a K9 Officer, we were allowed to bring out K9 patrol cars home so that we could be “on call” for off duty emergencies. I got a call one night and went to start my patrol car. The battery was dead.
I pulled my truck up to the nose of the patrol car and started to hook up the jumper cables which is something I’ve done hundred’s of times. Only I never paid attention to what they say about flammable gases from batteries, and hooking the negative clamp to a grounded part of the engine or frame of the car being jumped. I hooked battery post to battery post as I’ve done for years and as soon as I hooked the clamp to the negative post of my patrol car, I saw a bright flash and heard a tremendous explosion.
I have news for you folks. There’s a bomb under your hood and it’s called a battery! I was knocked unconscious momentarily and awoke to find burning battery acid in flames under the hood of the car. While squinting out of one eye, I grabbed one of 3 fire extinguishers that I had on the wall and put out the fire. I couldn’t see out of my right eye because of blood pouring out of a wound over my eye. The battery had blown into pieces, and I had been stuck by shrapnel! I laid down on the driveway and flooded my eyes with water from the garden hose for about 20 minutes. My jumpsuit uniform was destroyed by acid. How I didn’t lose my eyes, or be disfigured from acid burns I’ll never know.
I do know this. If you’re one of the unlucky people that I stop to help on the roadside because your car died, and it’s due to a dead battery? Guess who isn’t helping out! I’ll call you a tow truck, but “homey ain’t playin that game again!”
The moral of the story?
Follow directions. They are for a reason.
Dress appropriately. It’s for a reason. (Unless of course you like unsightly scars on your body.)
Protect the young ones in your family, and in the neighborhood. Don’t make these materials accessible! PERIOD!
Store materials away from flammable sources such as water heaters. I hate to tell you to spend money, but I’m a big fan of those portable metal or aluminum storage sheds that you place “away from your home.” And the doors lock! No kids can get in there! Label the shed with the contents of materials inside so that firefighters know what’s inside in case of an emergency!
Best thing you can do for yourself? Call your local fire department as Brent told you earlier, and request to speak to the fire prevention officer. Many of these people will actually come out to your house and do a “home inspection” for you, suggesting ways to prevent fire risk, and how to plan for an accident should one happen.
Write down the number for your local “Poison Control Center” and place it next to your phones, and in the garage. In the case of an emergency, the FIRST CALL should be to 911. Most operators will automatically forward you through to Poison Control, but if not, HAVE THE NUMBER ACCESSIBLE!
Take an accredited class for medical emergencies through the Red Cross, or American heart association. That one time you need it, you’ll thank God that you did. If you don’t, that one time you’ll need the training, you’ll be asking God why you didn’t!
From a Cops viewpoint? PLEASE call us if you have neighbors with no class. The ones who dig a hole in the yard to dump 5 gallons of old gasoline or oil into it, and then bury it. The ones who dump oil into the gutter and wash it down. The ones who are too lazy to take their old materials and dump them properly at the local collection center.
We love to issue those $5,000.00 citations to those who HAVE NO CLASS! Dumping hazardous materials into a creek or out in a field?
I pray that someone sees you doing it, gives us your license plate number, and that we stop you as you leave the area. But then again, you could avoid all that by having some class and DOING WHATS RIGHT!
Got a neighbor that is storing hazardous materials in an unsafe manner on their property. City Code Enforcement Officers love to follow up on these complaints. If you don’t tell us about it, there’s times we’ll never know about it.
Take care of yourselves, your homes, and each other. I’m thinking we won’t have any problems that way! Beat the odds. Plan ahead.
Every Action has a Reaction. What’s yours gonna be? JL
