This post proves two things. One, that Albright and Wilson as a company were totally incompetent at handling and storing this destructive chemical weapon, particularly it seems under the management in the 80’s and early 1990’s of the abysmal Peter Bloore. Two, that its workforce were liable to be seriously injured as a result of this corporate negligence, so what hope for the wider community’s safety, when at this time the bespectacled snake and his PR team was actively attempting to paint such a wonderful picture of this “benevolent” and historic Oldbury company?
I have previously looked at why white phosphorus burns, and another incident where a worker was burnt in the 1970’s.
The article comes from The Sandwell Evening Mail of 17th June 1986.
I am aware of who the identity of this person was, and they appear to have featured in a corporate AW video about safety– implying that it was the workers fault he got burnt, which I do not believe to be the case.
“REMEMBER, PHOSPHORUS ALLOWS NO SECOND CHANCES”
I did a feature on this video nasty hypocrisy, which you can read HERE, after which the video posted on youtube mysteriously disappeared, or did it 😛 😆 😆
I would question the claims of Bloore against the actual picture FFS!
As always, the circumstances about these incidents are not very well drawn in the report, and it states that the worker , who I know had worked for this company for over 30 years at this point, came into contact with spilt P4. You would therefore believe that he knew what he was doing and would have been wearing necessary PPE?
As ever, the serial liar Bloore attempts to play down the issue by stating that the shoulder burns were “slight”, but the head burns “thermal”. In other words, they were fucking serious! Also remember that P4 does not just go out when alight, it continues to burn the flesh to the bone, and this workman would have been at serious risk of systemic poisoning, as well as phossy jaw, which AW historically attempted to also play down by monitoring its workforce.
We do not know of what happened to Albright and Wilson’s infamous firemen shams on this occasion, but I have dealt with them in this same year just a few months earlier in another toxic archive HERE.
The professionals at Oldbury were back at the scene just six hours later to attend to the same issue at the same equipment, indicating that it had not been dealt with properly first time, or was faulty to start with?
There would of course be other later incidents involving white phosphorus spillages and fires at the same site, and under the same incompetent stewardship.