Fumes Leak Injures 3 At Princeton

Trentonian
9 July 1981

Fumes Leak Injures 3 At Princeton

By MIKE McGOWAN
Correspondent

PRINCETON — Two Princeton University employees and a truck driver yesterday were treated for inhalation, of non-toxic chemical fumes which had leaked from a bottle in a truck at the university.

When Michael Joachm of Trenton, a Hermann Forwarding Co truck driver, opened the truck to unload some electrical cables for the university’s computer center, he smelled the fumes and stepped back gasping, said Jack Faust of the university’s Office of Occupational Safety and Health.

The throat-irritating fumes of the substance, which was to be delivered to E.R. Squibb & Sons in Lawrenceville, spread to the computer center basement, where one of the employees began to vomit.

The employee, whose name was not released, another employee who is pregnant and Joachm were taken to Princeton Medical Center, where they were released later in the day.

The two-liter bottle of ethlyene glyco- dimethyl, known as liquid glyme, apparently tipped over in the moving truck and leaked because it was improperly sealed, said Armand DiPanicis, director of Safety and Security at Hermann Forwarding Co., a South Brunswick firm.

About 75 persons were evacuated as a precautionary measure, according to Knawm Friedman, associate director of the computer center.

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