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On April 3, 2009 US EPA Region 4 received a NRC notification (#901777) reporting the discovery of a mercury spill on a demolition site. The amount of mercury released was estimated at 1 pint. The NRC report was called in by private citizen. EPA phone duty coordinated via phone with NC Emergency Management, County Emergency Management, Greensboro Fire Dept. and Guilford County Environmental Health.
The facility being demolished is a former Harvin Reaction Technologies chemical plant, it is now owned by Dash Multi Corp. The chemical plant used to manufacture fire retardant foam, spray-on foam used for fire proofing construction material (I Beams, walls, etc).
Greensboro Fire Department responded along with Guilford County Health, the released mercury was observed and confirmed. The spill area was isolated. The property owners were notified and the plant manager and the demolition company (D.H. Griffin) contracted a security company to perform on-site security and contracted with A&D Environmental to perform cleanup activities to begin on the morning of April 4th. A&D Environmental will utilize a "merc-vac" and "mercsorb" to conduct cleanup.
According to the plant Manager there were 3 manometers on site. Each manometer contained approximately a cup of mercury. The manometers were used to monitor tank levels (level indicator). Chemtron was hired to labpack chemicals prior to demolition activities were started. A&D Environmental had conducted tank cleaning on-site prior to demolition activities. The site had several tanks containing fire retardant foam, polymers, resins, etc. The source of the spilled mercury is not known at this time.
After all visible elemental mercury was collected using a merc vac. Harvin's Contractor, A&D Environmental attempted to Heat and Vent the mercury contaminated debris and concrete pad to vaporize any "microbeads". Air monitoring indicated that the heating was elevating mercury vapor concentrations at the property boundary. The Heat and Vent approach was stopped and all mercury contaminated debris will be disposed of as mercury contaminated construction debris. The concrete pad was removed and confirmatory soil samples have been collected under the former concrete pad.
Awaiting confirmatory sample results, will refer to DENR Haz-Waste Section.
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