Propane and Odor Fade

Bruce — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 18:58:53 +0000

Lisa Dejong, The Flint Journal

Six children, ranging from 2 to 19 years of age, were killed when this rural Michigan house exploded early on the morning of September 3, 2005. If you use propane in your home or business, this kind of incident could happen to you. Here’s what you need to know about propane and odor fade.

ABOUT PROPANE
ODOR FADE
PROPANE SAFETY
DOCUMENTS
NOTABLE PROPANE INCIDENTS
PROPANE NEWS

About Propane

Propane, also known as liquefied petroleum (LP) gas, is a versatile and clean-burning fuel used for a variety of home, commercial and industrial purposes.

About 7 million households, or about 6.5% of the 106 million U.S. households, depend on propane as the primary fuel for heating and cooking, according to the National Propane Gas Association. Another 10 million households have one or more propane-fueled appliance, and about 47 million homes have outdoor propane grills. Propane is also used in about 7 billion square feet of commercial space in the U.S.

PROPANE ODOR

In a natural state, propane and natural gas have no odor, taste, or color. An odorizing agent is added to the gas in order to warn consumers of a leak. The odorant in propane is ethyl mercaptan, a sulfur-based compound that gives it a distinctive rotten-egg smell (see What’s that smell?).

PROPANE AND NATURAL GAS

The properties of propane are much different than those of natural gas. It is critically important to appreciate these distinctions:

Propane has 2.5 times more energy per cubic foot than natural gas.
Propane is heavier than air, while natural gas is lighter than air.
Propane can lose its odor.

What this means: While natural gas will tend to rise into the atmosphere and disperse, propane sinks to the ground and is prone to collect in low areas and enclosed spaces. Propane behaves more like water, hugging the ground and flowing downhill toward the lowest spot it can find, such as a basement, cellar, crawl space or utility room. Propane can even flow underground if leaked from buried pipes. Like water, propane can seep through a foundation into the space beneath a home or business. It has a propensity to accumulate and pool.

When mixed in the proper proportion with air, propane is highly explosive. Propane explosions can be very powerful, causing severe structural damage and in many cases completely leveling a building. Fatalities and severe injuries are common.

Odor Fade

The odor of propane may be diminished or absent under a variety of conditions. Issues begin long before propane is delivered to the consumer (see Matters of degree).Research shows that the mercaptan can chemically react and be absorbed by other materials, significantly reducing the level of odorant in the gas.

STEEL TANKS AND LINES

Odorant can be faded by the presence of air, water or rust inside a tank or cylinder. Mercaptan chemically reacts with steel and rust in tanks and fuel lines, neutralizing the odorant over a period of days or weeks. The odorant in a common 20-pound cylinder can be completely depleted in five to seven days, resulting in gas that is essentially deodorized.

Often the tanks are new or have not been used continuously. If an empty propane tank is allowed to remain open to the atmosphere, a layer of rust can form on the inside that will result in odor fade when the tank is filled again.

The risk of odor fade varies depending on the materials and methods used in manufacture of tanks. A Canadian oil company found that the odorant in gas stored in cylinders from one manufacturer was stable, but cylinders from another manufacturer showed “rapid and complete fade” of odorant.

The odor in propane can be faded in brand new cylinders. In a survey of 1-pound cylinders purchased in retail stores, the odorant was found to be significantly depleted in six of nine cylinders.

The propensity for odor fade can vary from refill to refill. The chart below shows that in one 20-pound grill-type cylinder, the level of mercaptan dropped to zero the first and third time it was filled, but not the second or fourth time.

source

CONCRETE, MASONRY AND POROUS MATERIALS

Propane odorant is readily absorbed by concrete, masonry, drywall and other porous materials used in foundations and basements.

In a test done for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, a concrete block was placed in a chamber representing the dimensions of a typical basement, which was then filled to an explosive level with propane. In four hours, the level of ethyl mercaptan fell below the limit of detection. Two hours later, no ethyl mercaptan remained in the gas.

Ethyl mercaptan is also effectively stripped from propane gas as it flows through soil, as from a leaking buried pipe. Percolating propane through soil can remove some or all of the odorant from propane, similarly to running water through an activated charcoal filter.

Olfaction

The acuity of the sense of smell varies widely among apparently healthy people, and diminishes with age. The older we get, the less we are able to detect odors. The ability to smell is affected by colds and allergies, smoking, and conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease. Millions of Americans are unable to smell mercaptan — many of whom are unaware of that fact.

More than half of people over 60 don’t recognize the smell of gas, according to a survey by Monell Chemical Senses Center. The average 70-year-old’s threshold for detecting ethyl mercaptan is 10 times higher than that of the average 18-year-old, according to investigators at the John B. Pierce Foundation Laboratory.

Smells can also be “masked” by fumes, solvents or grease, smoke, cooking and other odors.

What this means: You can’t rely on the odor of propane to warn of a leak. The odor may be very faint, or you may smell nothing unusual at all.

Documents

Odorant Depletion in Portable Cylinders. Analysis of odor fade in tanks conducted by Esso Canada.

Final Report: Characterization of LP Gas Odorant Fade. Analysis of odor fade done by Arthur D. Little, Inc., for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Odor Fade: Possible Causes and Remedies. Report by Michael Usher of Elf Atochem North America for the CGA Gas Measurement School.

The Smell of Danger. Article from Chem Matters magazine that provides an overview of the technical issues related to propane odor fade.

Notable Propane Incidents

W. Dayton Whittle, The Register-Herald

LITTLE GENERAL STORE, GHENT, WV

On the morning of January 30, 2007, a gas company worker encountered a problem while transferring propane from an old tank to a new replacement tank behind a rural convenience store and gas station. A component on the older tank broke, allowing propane vapor to escape. A fire crew from the Ghent, WV, volunteer fire department and an ambulance were dispatched to the scene. Within minutes, propane had seeped into the convenience store. It exploded with such force that the a fire truck and ambulance were flipped over, five homes were damaged, and windows were blown out at the Ghent Elementary School. Four people were killed and five others were seriously injured.

More information:
Investigation and report by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
Deadly day in Ghent
Memorial slide show from West Virginia South magazine
Google News: Ghent explosion

FALK CORPORATION, MILWAUKEE, WI

The Falk Corporation is a manufacturer of industrial gears and couplings, and one of the oldest factories in Milwaukee. On December 6, 2006, employees were testing a backup propane-fueled power system. An employee reported a leak in a 30,000-gallon propane tank, and portions of the 61-acre complex began to be evacuated when an explosion ripped through the plant. Propane gas had filled a warehouse. Three people were killed and 47 others were injured. The blast destroyed an area of about two football fields and blew debris blocks away. Windows miles away were broken. Vehicles were hurled through the air, and about thirty cars were destroyed.

More information:
Explosion at Falk Corp.
Photo gallery from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Wikipedia: 2006 Falk Corporation Explosion

STOCKLINE/ICL PLASTICS FACTORY, GLASGOW, SCOTLAND

Propane from a corroded underground pipe leaked into the ICL Plastics factory building in western Glasgow. Around midday on May 11, 2004, an explosion destroyed the four-story building, which largely collapsed into a pile of rubble. Nine people were killed, including two company executives. Thirty-seven others were injured, 15 of them seriously.

More information:
Photo gallery from BBC News
The ICL Inquiry
The ICL/Stockline Disaster
Wikipedia: ICL Plastics factory explosion
Google News: ICL Plastics Factory Explosion

KELTIE’S BUM STEER, BREWSTER, NY

Propane from a single grill-type 20-pound cylinder leaked into the space beneath a restaurant, which had been built over a swimming pool. While preparing for the evening meal on July 28, 1997, a spark from a vacuum cleaner ignited an explosion that killed the restaurant’s manager and a 25-year-old woman who was there interviewing for a waitress job. Five others were seriously injured.

More information:
Keltie’s blast shows dangers of propane

HUMBERTO VIDAL EXPLOSION, SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

On the morning of November 21, 1996, an explosion ripped through a popular department store in a busy shopping district of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Much of the first, second, and third floors of the six-story building were shattered and dropped into the basement. The blast was so powerful that authorities suspected it was a terrorist attack. Propane leaking from an underground pipe had been drifting into the building for days until apparently ignited by an air conditioner. Thirty-three people were killed and 80 were injured.

More information:
Final report of investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board
Report from Suburban Emergency Management Project
Wikipedia: Humberto Vidal Explosion

Propane News

PROPANE NEWS ARCHIVE

NOTE: The author of this page has no affiliation, employment or financial relationship with any energy company, attorney or propane-related group. He is a disinterested journalist. If you are a member of the media working on a story, please let me know for my files.

This page last updated 08/31/10.

Driving a Point about Health Care Reform

Bruce — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:20:51 +0000

I’m mesmerized by this video, watching it over and over again while contemplating this current debate over health care reform.

To commemorate its 50th anniversary, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) – the organization that conducts crash tests and issues safety ratings of cars – recently smashed together a 2009 Chevrolet Malibu and a gorgeous, mint-condition 1959 Chevy Bel Air.

Nothing is particularly remarkable about the Malibu or the Bel Air. Each represents the typical car of the era.

The collision between the old and the new starkly demonstrates the improvements in automotive safety design and fabrication that have evolved over the last 50 years.

Watching the slow-motion physics is startling. The front of the Bel Air crumples, thrusting the engine into the passenger compartment. You can see the front bench seat lift and separate from the frame. The driver’s door pops open, the windshield flies out. The driver bounces around the passenger compartment like a lottery ball in a Pick Four draw, striking the steering wheel in the head and chest.

By comparison, the passenger compartment of the Malibu – featuring restraints, air bags and modern design and manufacture – remains comparatively intact. The driver’s forward momentum is cushioned by the air bag deploying from the steering wheel.

The key to appreciating the significance of the video is this: The auto industry fought tooth and nail against all of those safety innovations.

The Bel Air was designed purely by the industry, while the Malibu has all the safety features that have been mandated by law ever since. You could label one car “Free Market” and the other “Government Regulation.”

Automotive safety began to gather steam in the U.S. in the early 1960s. In this respect, the country was well behind developments that had already occurred in Europe and elsewhere. Seat belts weren’t required on new cars until mandated in a law passed by Congress in 1966, which also created the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The auto industry didn’t want seat belts to be mandatory. Pardon me for summarizing decades of history, but there is a substantial body of literature for anybody interested in studying the background of the auto industry’s attitude and activities regarding safety.

Auto companies preferred to pack their cars with power steering, power brakes, power windows, more powerful engines. They argued that seat belts were an additional expense that consumers didn’t want. Seat belts were cumbersome and uncomfortable.

Stories circulated – today we’d call it a meme – that seat belts would kill you by interfering with your ability to escape a car in case of a fire or submersion.

Sound familiar?

The auto industry lobbied intensely against mandatory air bags (they’ll kill you!) and three-point restraints (the shoulder strap will break your neck or decapitate you!). Some even argued against mandatory child safety seats, since they put an additional burden on those least able to afford them.

The auto industry fought to kill legislation in Congress, water down standards, and delay implementation for years. They said the government has no business getting involved in automotive design, which should be left to car company engineers who, after all, know what’s best for consumers. They opposed the very idea of auto safety and crash testing.

Today, of course, we accept all these things as givens – air bags, passenger restraints, energy-absorbing designs, crumple zones. We don’t even think about it. We all know it’s built in.

When you get behind the wheel of a car today, you have some assurance that if an idiot plows into you the steering wheel won’t smash into your face and your toddler become a ballistic projectile.

Who do you have to thank for that? The U.S. auto industry? They could have done it on their own, but didn’t. The Swedish car company Saab introduced seat belts as a standard feature in 1958.

Left on their own, the U.S. auto companies would likely have delayed introducing safety innovations for many years. There is more money to be made in air conditioning and radios. Absent the law, if introduced at all safety features would been an option available only to people who could afford them.

Safety was not a big selling point. Only in recent years have car companies begun touting the safety of their products and showing crash footage in commercials. It’s hard to imagine a 1970s-era commercial for a Cadillac or Mustang in which the car is smashed to pieces. In general, it isn’t considered a good idea to associate your product with injury and death, which is why car companies would rather not talk about it.

According to IIHS, the driver of the Bel Air would have been killed instantly. The driver of the Malibu would have survived with an injured knee.

So when you’re thinking about health care reform and wondering who is looking out for your interests and those of your family, or you hear somebody say that government regulation never does any good, ask yourself this: Which car would you rather drive?

Lives in the Balance

Bruce — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 23:11:29 +0000

FAMILY FRIEND GENE BOSCO AND BOB ROCHE (BACKGROUND).

Louise bends to stroke Bob Roche’s hair and murmur into his ear. “Robert,” she says softly, dropping the T in the French version of his name. “We have company.”

Their eyes meet for a moment. Louise smiles adoringly at her husband of 28 years. Roche swivels his head, his eyes fixed on a distant, unseen horizon. He sighs and moans. The low whir of medical equipment fills the sparsely furnished living room. Roche grimaces, smacking his lips. Gnarled by contractures, his hands slowly gesture without purpose.

“It’s so hard to see him like that,” Louise says, her dark fingers tenderly cradling his face. “He didn’t bring me here for this.”

The lives of the Roche family – and of countless others halfway around the world whose own lives had been ineffably touched by his years of service to the least among us – were indelibly altered on the night of December 4, 1997, when a rush-hour impact dispatched Bob to a place somewhere between life and death.

Friends and family say Roche is in a coma. Doctors call it a persistent vegetative state, the result of severe head injury. “He’s not in a coma,” explains his doctor, John Serlemitsos, MD. “He’s awake and has sleep cycles.”

Roche is fed by a tube through his abdominal wall directly into his stomach. He is unable to control his excretory functions or cough. Every few minutes Louise or one of the other family members in attendance 24 hours a day uses a slender plastic suction tip to clear his airway of saliva and mucus so he doesn’t choke to death. The daily routine is a constant struggle against pressure sores, pneumonia, and the ever-present infection risk to catheters and lines.

“Anything could become fatal,” Serlemitsos says. “Bob is somebody being kept alive by advanced life support. He would not survive without the support. For somebody to go 12 years like that is pretty remarkable.”

This isn’t the Bob Roche that friends remember. A native of Pittsburgh, Roche was the oldest of 6 siblings. An Eagle Scout and a seminary student, Roche grew up in a time when John K. Kennedy’s exhortation to ask what you can do for your country still resonated. It was an age of social consciousness. The civil rights movement, environmental movement and women’s liberation movement heralded an era of change.

A 1972 graduate of Notre Dame, Roche was a member of the last class before the university went co-ed. Denis Garvey a Charlotte, NC businessman, met Roche on his first day at the University. While waiting in line, he overheard a tall student with bushy hair mention that he was from Pittsburgh – his own hometown. “He was a big guy with a big laugh,” he recalls. “We became friends from that day.”

“He was always a big-hearted person with a social conscience,” says Bill Joyce, an elementary school teacher in Oakland, Calif., who like Roche received his degree from Notre Dame in sociology. “He was a good guy to be around. He had a very lively spirit to him.”

BOB AND LOUISE ROCHE IN MAY 1997, SEVEN MONTHS BEFORE THE ACCIDENT.

Roche attended graduate school in forestry at Oregon State University, but was disillusioned by the timber industry’s rapacious appetite for old-growth Pacific Northwest forest. “He was so terribly disenchanted with all those hills stripped of trees,” recalls his mother, Elizabeth, now retired in Ft. Myers, FL. “He was thoroughly beside himself.”

He quit graduate school and sought an opportunity to have a more direct and immediate impact on people’s lives. In 1974, Roche joined the Peace Corps, serving in some of the most impoverished regions of Africa. The places Roche went had no modern conveniences such as telephone or electricity, often lacking potable water and proper sanitation, where disease was endemic and scarce resources led to widespread starvation, strife and civil war.

Roche was assigned to the remote jungle village of Mwanda in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a former Belgian colony once known as Zaire, where French is the national language but a half-dozen other tongues are spoken. He taught English, French, mathematics and agriculture.

“He loved the African people because they are very warm, family-oriented people,” says Elizabeth. “They are very friendly and hospitable. When you meet somebody, they’re likely to touch you and invite you into their home.”

He met Louise in 1979 in the capital city of Kinshasa. Roche was in the sprawling city to pick up boxes of vaccine to take back to his village. He and a handful of Peace Corps volunteers decided to eat lunch at a restaurant owned by members of Louise’s family. Louise had stopped in the restaurant while out on errands with her young niece. Unable to speak English, Louise’s sister-in-law was frustrated by the hungry Peace Corp volunteers and asked her to translate and take their order.

Roche was smitten. Louise was a petite beauty with lovely smooth chocolate skin. She was demure, and had a warm smile that melted his heart. Not quite 19 years old, she was also about ten years his junior. Undaunted by the gulfs of age and culture separating them, Roche knew immediately that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

Roche returned to the restaurant for lunch the next day. Once again, Louise translated for him. This time, Roche asked if he could write to her. She said yes, and they exchanged addresses.

Roche courted her the traditional Congolese way, by establishing a rapport and negotiating with her family. As the only girl in her family, Louise’s father and brothers were fiercely protective of her. In time, Roche convinced them of his honorable intentions through his letters and by sending money for Louise to take English classes.

His tenure with the Peace Corps coming to an end, in 1980 Roche returned to the U.S. and sought a job that would take him back to Africa. By November, he had accepted a position with Catholic Relief Services (CRS), a Baltimore-based organization that serves the impoverished and disadvantaged in more than 100 countries. Roche was assigned as country representative for Mauritania, a desperately poor nation on Africa’s Atlantic coast.

As country representative, Roche coordinated the distribution of medicines, food, mosquito netting and other supplies. He was responsible for educational programs and helped support agricultural development, such as building roads so food crops can be brought to markets.

Providing relief services in Africa is a challenge but deeply rewarding, says Carl Foreman of CRS, a colleague who served as country representative in other nations on the continent. “It’s a sacrifice. You’re exposed to all of the local conditions; poor sanitation, cholera and malaria,” he says. “You tend to realize that there are a lot of things at your disposal [in the U.S.] that you really don’t need.”

In early 1981, Roche wrote Louise and told her he was returning to Congo to get married. Who is your fiancé, she asked. But he was evasive. In May, Roche visited Louise bearing clothing, jewelry and other gifts bought in Senegal for her and the family. He took the family out for dinner and popped the question. Sweeping her up in his arms, he asked in French, “Will you marry me?” Her family whooped in celebration.

“People were staring at us like we were crazy. I had to say yes so Bob would leave me alone,” Louise says, laughing at the memory. “He really touched me. I thought, he doesn’t know these people, and he’s bringing boxes of vaccine for the children in the village. That showed me he was a good person.”

Robert and Louise married on May 28, 1981 at Kinshasa’s city hall. For the traditional Congolese ceremony that followed, locals were hired as stand-ins to represent Roche’s family.

Over the next 14 years the couple traveled across Africa from one place of desperation to another – from Mauritania to Burundi, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Benin and Ghana. They visited Pittsburgh often on summer vacations and for routine medical and dental care. All of their children were born in U.S. hospitals – Robert in 1982, Melissa in 1984 and Annette in 1986.

In 1994, Roche was reassigned to the CRS headquarters and the family moved to the Baltimore suburb of Columbia, MD. Roche enrolled in the MBA program at Loyola College in Maryland. Louise took classes at the local community college, where friends admired her unique African hairstyles. She began doing hair informally at home, gaining a reputation for her artistic talents with cuts, braids and weaves. Their beautiful children were attending private school. Life was good.

Everything changed on that rainy December 4 evening.

Since Louise needed the car to pick up the kids at school, Bob took the commuter bus home. He stepped off the bus on Little Patuxent Parkway, the busy six-lane boulevard that runs through Columbia. His mind was likely occupied with the just-completed MBA final project report he was carrying in his briefcase, or perhaps he was just hurrying to get out of the cold drizzle. He may not have noticed that the light had changed. Roche stepped to cross the parkway and was struck by a car with such force that his body was found 90 feet away from the spot where his briefcase remained standing.

He was rushed to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at University of Maryland, a legendary trauma center regarded as the last hope of dying motorists. Roche arrived in critical condition, with multiple fractures and internal injuries — the most serious of which was severe head trauma.

When her husband didn’t arrive home after work, Louise went out in the car to look for him. He had been expected to join the family in attending their youngest daughter’s school play that evening. Louise traced Roche’s route, detouring around the accident scene that still blocked the parkway, and returned home.

“There was no phone call from him. Nobody knew where he was. We didn’t know what to do,” Louise remembers. “Around 8:40 we heard a knock at the door. I opened and saw the police and just started crying.”

Amidst the flurry of phone calls to her mother-in-law, the neighbors and a friend to go along to the trauma center, Melissa, then 13 years old, asked her mother, “Does this mean our life is going to change?”

“I said, ‘I don’t know,’” Louise tearfully recalls.

She was unprepared for what awaited her at Shock Trauma. Roche was wrapped in bandages, his breathing supported by a mechanical ventilator. “They brought me into this room,” she says. “He was so swollen, with blood everywhere. His face didn’t look the same. I didn’t recognize him as my husband. That’s not Robert. And then I saw his hair and I knew.”

Roche lived through the first 24 hours. He survived the next seven days, and then the weeks stretched into months. After two months in Shock Trauma, he was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital and eventually into a long-term care facility.

He’s blind. He hasn’t spoken since the injury. He responds to painful stimuli, but there is no way to know whether he is aware of his surroundings. Serlemitsos says that Roche has likely plateaued in terms of recovery, improving as much as he ever will.

“Once in a while you hear about somebody who wakes up or speaks after being in a coma for a long time, but those are very unusual cases,” Serlemitsos explains. “Bob’s brain injury is much more global. The prognosis for any improvement at this point is very poor.”

Dissatisfied with the care provided by the nursing home, Louise became more involved in caring for her husband. The nursing home staff allowed him to remain in soiled bedding too long, which harms the skin and can lead to life-threatening pressure sores. Louise spent her days at the nursing home, drive home to pick up the kids at school and make them dinner, then return to the nursing home to spend the evening.

“I was spending more time with him than I was with the kids,” she says. “It was very stressful.”

Louise opened a hair salon in Fort Meade, MD, across the street from the vast National Security Agency campus, from which she draws a large portion of her clientele. The drive between home and the salon takes her through the intersection where her husband was struck.

Money remains an ever-present issue, even with occasional gifts of money from CRS. Roche receives medical assistance benefits, which doesn’t cover prescription drugs or a host of other expenses. Neither Louise nor the rest of the family are covered by health insurance.

One Christmas, Louise spent $1,000 to hire an ambulance and rent the medical equipment needed to transport Roche home. Spending the holiday together lifted the family’s spirits so much that in 2000 Louise decided to bring her husband home for good. “My husband did everything to take care of me and our children,” she says. “He did everything for us. We had to do this for him.”

Caring for her husband was too much for Louise to do by herself, so she asked her brother Batame Mupondo, who was trained as a nurse, to come to the U.S. and help. “He said, ‘Of course. I’ll do this for what Bob did for Africa,’” she recalls. Mupondo has cared for his brother-in-law for nine years.

The arrangement is better for Roche, giving him more attention than he could receive in any facility. “They have been pretty aggressive in keeping him alive,” Selemitsos says. “It’s remarkable that Bob has come along this far.”

“We’re happy that Bob can be with us,” Louise says. “His care is 24/7. Somebody is always with him in the house. We’re all committed to him.”

The family’s devotion to Bob is a fitting tribute to the African lives he enhanced in immeasurable ways, observes Garvey. “If there were ever a question of whether one person can make a difference, I think Bob is the answer,” he says.

ROBERT AND MELISSA ROCHE

Despite the family’s travails, the Roche children have thrived academically and as individuals. Annette, 22, is completing her undergraduate degree at the City College of New York. Melissa, 25, was awarded her degree from James Madison University in 2006 and works with her mother in the salon. Robert, 26, received a graduate degree in conflict resolution from Eastern Mennonite University.

Following his father’s footsteps, Robert is serving with Catalyst for Peace in war-torn Sierra Leone, helping people work through reconciliation and healing. The younger Robert has visited places throughout Africa where the name of Robert Roche is still remembered with affection.

The family’s loving care of Roche, however, couldn’t protect them from another disasterous event.

Mupondo was home alone with Roche on the evening of March 5, tube-feeding him in the bedroom, when fire broke out in the kitchen. As thick smoke billowed through the house, the slight 50-year-old Mupondo struggled to hoist the much larger and heavier Roche, but was unable to carry him out to safety. He called 911 and remained in the burning house by his brother-in-law’s side, waiting for the fire trucks to arrive. He was willing to risk his own life to save Roche.

“I would like to die rather than Robert,” Mupondo told a newspaper reporter covering the fire. “If [the fire department] hadn’t come, I would have liked to die with him.”

The home sustained $80,000 of damage and is inhabitable. Roche was temporarily hospitalized while the rest of the family sought housing elsewhere. Louise stayed briefly in a Red Cross emergency shelter. The family is together again in a nearby house made available by a friend. It will be months before their home is repaired. In the meantime, Roche is where his family wants him, back in the center of their lives.

“We’re so happy to be with him every day. He’s a joy,” Louise says, caressing her husband’s hair. “We just want him to wake up and come back to us. We weren’t prepared for this kind of life. We just want him to talk to us again.”

From Notre Dame Magazine, Summer 2009

You Know My Name

Bruce — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 00:54:45 +0000

I have a thing about names. Silly names. Many years ago, I began making up names to sign up for tobacco company promotions for my own perverse amusement. Since then, a regular stream of mail has appeared in my mailbox for a rather unusual group of people living at one address.

I now have dozens of pieces of mail. It’s an impressive stack of slick colorful marketing material. Click on each image for the full-size version.

I also receive Lex Luthor’s mail.

Klutz Nation

Bruce — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:36:00 +0000

I recently discovered an alarming resource on the web — the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS). It’s a sort of almanac of ouch.

NEISS compiles every injury reported to the CPSC, including the victim’s age and gender, the body part(s) affected, the circumstances under which it happened, and the products or materials that were involved. CPSC then calculates annual incidence rates based on surveillance data gathered from a network of emergency rooms.

Delving deeper into the database, I was impressed by the ingenuity and determination Americans apply to getting hurt.

Much of the data were no no-brainers, so to speak. There were about 35,100 injuries caused by hammers in 2007, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Similarly, there were 10,066 injuries due to axes or hatchets, and 3,479 injuries caused by band saws.

And then there are products that aren’t usually considered menacing -– 15,149 injuries involving hats, handbags or clothing accessories; 17,851 injuries related to telephones or telephone accessories; 2,241 ashtray-related injuries; 1,838 injuries implicating baby bottles or nipples; 1,597 injuries from artificial Christmas trees.

For a taste of irony, there were 42,060 injuries caused by first aid equipment and 1,855 injuries linked to fire extinguishers.

One note in a NEISS document sheds light on an apparently years’ long titanic tussle within the agency over the need for ongoing surveillance of corkscrew-related injuries –- two reports of which were entered into the database in all of 2007. The corkscrew category was deleted from the NIESS database in 1983, restored in 1994, deleted again in 1995, and restored for the last time in May of 2000. No doubt the agency was lobbied intensely by the pull-tab industry. One imagines the memos that flew back and forth outlining the persuasive arguments against and in favor of monitoring corkscrew injuries.

The most innocuous object can be extraordinarily dangerous. According to the CPSC, there were 9,948 injuries caused by books, magazines, albums or scrapbooks in 2007. That’s more than double the 4,393 injuries involving archery. You’re twice as likely to be hurt while reading than by a bow and arrow!

The first book-related injury record chosen at random included these actual horrific details: “[S]ubject was reading a book and sprained right wrist.”

No wonder the print publishing industry is on the ropes. They’re killing customers! When have you ever seen a warning on a book or magazine? I can’t count the number of times I’ve flipped a page excessively vigorously, nearly risking injury to one of my more important hands. Paper cuts and staple impalements are also constant threats. Reading is not for the timid.

Until publishers start acting responsibly I’m going to stick with something safer, like cigarettes. You know the cigarette companies care for you because they’re continually providing helpful warnings. Even butane lighters have a warning label instructing you to keep the flame away from your face, ensuring that it remains a safe distance from the tip of the cigarette. Now that’s thoughtful.

Herewith for your consideration are NIESS annual incidence data for selected everyday hazards:

CATEGORY
Adhesive tape
Business and office machines
Desk supplies (excluding pens & pencils)
Manual filing or sanding tools
Bedspreads, throws and comforters
Padlocks
Toothpicks or hors d’oeuvre picks
Footwear
Combs or hairbrushes, unpowered
Non-electric toothbrushes
Clocks, not electrical or battery-powered
Glass alcoholic beverage bottles
Badminton
Bowling
Cheerleading
Dodgeball
Dancing
Hacky sack
Baseball (excluding softball)
Computers and video games
Amusement park rides
Drinking straws

INJURIES
1,770
2,355
12,135
2,454
2,465
3,613
9,155
155,171
3,393
2,953
2,835
15,311
2,021
21,819
26,786
34,775
46,441
64,627
167,661
19,714
18,776
1,809

Buried in Baltimore

Bruce — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 14:55:43 +0000

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I’m very pleased with the progress of WelcomeToBaltimoreHon.com. It’s a sort of love note for the city that adopted me almost 30 years ago.

My goal is to create a means to experience Baltimore in different ways, to make a site that encourages people – whether visitors or residents – to explore the city beyond the Inner Harbor.

I spent a few years traveling to medical conferences all around the country, making numerous trips to Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Orlando, New York, St. Louis, San Francisco and a couple of European cities. I read all the city guides, the tourism magazines they give you at the hotels. Every city has its usual suspects – zoo, aquarium, science center, historical museum.

Whenever I could, I’d seek out something particularly local, offbeat, more interesting that gives me a specific memory of the place I’m visiting. I also tried to fit in at least one extended walk through a neighborhood or avenue that seemed promising, to experience the locale at street level. After sitting through conference sessions all day, some evenings I’d walk for miles just to see what there is to see.

You meet a lot of people at these conferences. They know of Baltimore for different reasons – “The Wire,” the films of John Waters or Barry Levinson, its staggering STD and murder rates, the redevelopment of the Inner Harbor, Edgar Allan Poe. They’ve attended conferences in Baltimore, often with a spouse and/or kids, and say things like “Oh, Baltimore. Nice. We had a crab cake at Phillips.” Or, “I like the Inner Harbor. We went to the National Aquarium.”

Makes me want to facepalm. Not that there’s anything terribly wrong with Phillips or the National Aquarium or the Inner Harbor, but jeez, if you’d only walked a few blocks north you could have had a Faidley’s crab cake at the Lexington Market – a crab cake to tell your grandchildren about and also drink in some authentic everyday Baltimore. If I only have one sandwich in Philadelphia, I’d rather have the cheesesteak sub that locals eat than an airport cheesesteak sub. Please.

Science centers are practically a dime a dozen, but how many cities have a museum of untrained visionary art, or a dental museum? Having raised kids, we’ve done the National Aquarium. Many times. Oooo, pretty fishes. We’ve done the zoo many times too. It gets pricey after a while, with admissions around $50-60 for the family and a shakedown at the gift shop for trinkets and another stuffed animal. Expensive, routine and boring.

Over the years, we’ve visited practically every museum and attraction in town, and DC as well. Baltimore has lots of things to do, places to go, that don’t cost an arm and a leg. There are many overlooked museums that are inexpensive or free, such as the Historical Electronics Museum near the airport or the National Cryptological Museum at Fort Meade.

So aside from having a comprehensive list of every museum, nature center, attraction, cultural and historic places in Baltimore, I am creating information about dog parks, bike trails and similar things to do, particularly with kids. Not long ago, I completed a large portion of something I’m calling Buried in Baltimore – maps to the graves of famous people. Everything will be integrated as much as possible, so if you’re interested in Edgar Allan Poe there is information and maps for his house, his grave, the Poe Toaster, etc. I still have a few cemeteries across town to do.

I have plans to create a mass transit map, a map of former homes of famous people, and maps of locations used in “The Wire” and “Homicide: Life on the Streets.” I just finished the whole “Wire” series on DVD from Netflix, taking pages of notes. There will be information about painted screens and maps to where to see them. How and where to go crabbing around the watrerfront. Eventually there may be some blog-like content, but for the moment I’m focusing on infrastructure and maps. It’s a massive undertaking that may take years to complete. But it will be a resource unlike anything else on the web.

Ideally, some like-minded people might join in and contribute. Depending on how it grows and evolves, there could be a discussion forum or other features. What there won’t be are gadgets to make hotel reservations or car rentals, movies times, restaurant listings or things like that. There are plenty of other web sites for that.

WelcomeToBaltimoreHon.com is about everything else – the people and places and quirky things that make this city unique.

2008 is Enough

Bruce — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 13:44:20 +0000

OJ’s in the cooler, Bigfoot’s on ice
Bush will be gone soon, and that is nice
A moment to pause and reflect on the year
And remember things like “I’ll veto every single beer”
Somali pirates Caribou Barbie Joe the Plumber Lehman Brothers
Each day the news got worse than the others
Sichuan car czar snowstorm on Mars
Bailout staycation I have the scars
Mumbai Gaza South Ossetia
Madoff Spitzer Ledger you betcha
Favre Caylee Usain Blago
That one. He’s an Arab. Where does he go?
A twittering shoe-tossing team of mavericks
Michael Phelps palling with terrorists
Troopergate fist-jab I have one too.
So what? It’s a do-over I can’t do.
Paul (Newman) is dead, but Castro still isn’t
Stevens’ series of tubes leads to prison
Gas cost an arm and a leg to acquire
A nation of whiners under sniper fire
The year that just was wasn’t so great
(Unless you’re Obama, with cause to celebrate)
Wall Street got drunk and we’re in the tanks
Want more of the same? Thanks but no thanks.