I’m glowing! I heard from that backseat of our family SUV late one evening while returning home from a birthday party my daughter had been attending, I guess she was around 6 or 7 at the time. My wife looks into the dark back seat, screams and yell’s, “She is glowing!” I wasn’t sure what the heck was going on. I pull to the side of the rode, turn around, and yep, she was glowing. From her mouth, all over her face, the seat of the car, her hair. It was everywhere. It,…..was the stuff they put inside those glow in the dark necklaces that you break to activate and wear. Being a kid, she was chewing on it, it busted and presto! “I’m glowing!”
After finding out it wasn’t going to hurt her and finally getting it cleaned up. I realized, this is like a real Haz-Mat incident. Now, as of yet, I haven’t had one of my Haz-Mat Techs. Say “I’m glowing”…..yet. But, the premise was the same, unidentified substance, leaking from a breached container, and of course someone had it on them. Yes, my daughter was de-coned, in the bathtub, but de-coned none the less. In real Haz-Mat situations, we contain, isolate, identify and in some cases even clean some of it up.
Ok I know the stuff we deal with is usually bigger and certainly can be more dangerous. The problem with some of this stuff is, it will make you glow. And you can’t see it, so we don level A suits and get in the middle of it and deal with it. Deal with it with nothing more than a thin piece of plastic between us and it. I’ve been a Hazardous Materials Technician for over 20 years. I have always had a love, and respect, for dealing with that stuff, but it can be a dangerous game. I have dealt with all the anthrax scares in the early 2000’s to overturned semi’s on the interstate pouring this stuff out onto the roadway. No two incidents are alike.
So keep in mind the next time you hear some say, “I’m glowing”, you never know what you may be dealing with.
Until next time,
Captain K
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