HORTICULTURAL TECHNOLOGIES, PLASTIMET & NOW CROWE

Last Wednesday I posted here about the fire last week in Hespeler (Cambridge) at the old Crowe foundry. Similar to Horticultural Technologies in Kitchener (approx. 1988) and Plastimet in Hamilton, plastics were involved. Those two fires produced huge volumes of toxic smoke and I know with the Kitchener fire that a number of firefighters later developed various cancers and passed on. I suspect something similar happened with the Plastimet fire. Overall injuries and death are much greater for firefighters than for police officers as a comparison.

Then of course there was also the Hagersville tire fire way back around 1989. That was burning tires and the fire went on for days before it was brought under control. I was advised last week by a very knowledgable person that the recent Crowe fire produced the second largest amount of smoke and plumes that he had ever seen. Only Hagersville produced more in his opinion.

Plastics are basically petroleum derivatives. This means that they are chains of hydrocarbons or Hydrogen and Carbon. When plastics burn they produce dozens of very toxic compounds all capable of producing death in confined areas or cancer and other diseases over time. Basically having factories with large quantities of toxic compounds in them, in urban areas, is ridiculous. All the prevention and safety in the world can be useless either in a moment of carelessness or bad luck.

Here in Elmira we had our mini chemical valley on the east side of town. That is the downwind side of town most of the time. That was not by accident just as Uniroyal Chemical locating on both sides of the Canagagigue Creek was not an accident. All it will take here or in other urban areas is bad luck, bad management and or the wind blowing the wrong way. Our local politicians will then be moaning about acts of God when in fact it was acts of men including bad planning decisions in the first place. When all is said and done human health and life fall far short of money and power here as elsewhere. Our powerful and wealthy have always proclaimed the sanctity of their fellow human beings, all the way to the bank.