Have you ever stopped to think of the difficult and dangerous circumstances of a blind person, unable to see any life threatening elements? Just having to depend on his natural instincts to guide him through everyday obstacles.
And here we are, healthy and thinking how wonderful it is to be able to hear, see, feel , smell and even taste the elements around us. The very same elements that I could either make full use of or that could possibly harm me, my dear ones and not even to mention our environment. The terrible truth of such a situation is that it without being able to make use of our ever so trusted senses; devastating consequences will be the final outcome.
Items like this could also be called lethal killers within our day to day sphere are identified as hazardous gasses and chemicals that we use in our daily life’s and even allow our children to use and interact with. So many new developments are being made in the industries and manufacturing processes, that it is impossible to list all of the gasses, vapours, hazardous chemicals and liquids that could cause or has the potential to cause serious or even fatal injuries.
It is also difficult to always classify many a substance as either flammable or explosive, as under certain conditions some may not burn at all, but the same substances under altered conditions, these materials, may burn slowly, rapidly or even cause an explosion with devastating effects. Other gasses liquids, vapours and chemicals may not cause harm immediately but with time, could still be life threatening.
With this then in mind, it is safe to say that all gasses chemicals vapours fumes can then be classified as FLAMABLE, NON-FLAMABLE ANESTHETICAL IRRITANT OR EVEN ADDICTIONAL.
All these items discussed are not always neatly kept in secure containers with proper control system in place. At times they could be found as household objects and detergents and even in the nature as part of self degeneration of components forming methane gas.
Recently local mine workers tried to unblock and clean out a sewage drain system where they used chlorine flakes to clean and deter the smell; with this not working they added some swimming-pool acid. This deadly mixture with the added drain sewage - now formed chlorine gas which over powered the workers and resulted that everyone present had to be hospitalized.
REMEMBER if you can’t SEE it, SMELL or TASTE it – it does not necessarily mean that it isn’t there.
Author: Jan van Burick (janb@nosa.co.za / +27 83 259 1151).
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