On Feb 28, 11:33*am, Pavel314 wrote:
The building I work at was evacuated on Tuesday and shut down on Wendnesday after about 20 people in one area got sick; they were dizzy and nauseated enough to be taken to hospitals.

The hazmat team from the fire department checked everything and came to the conclusion that it was nitrates and nitrites contaminating one of several hot water heaters in the building. Apparently the people in the area supplied by that heater used the hot water from the tap for cooking or making tea and cocoa drinks.

My first thought was that a gasket or seal gave out, allowing the water to contact the contaminants, but I can't see why a water heater would have large amounts of nitrates and nitrites involved. Maybe someone on the group with experience in large-scale water heaters for an office building would know.

Someone in our department thought it might be a water softener system problem; maybe someone grabbed a bag of fertilizer instead of rock salt for the flush and wash cycle, but we're on city water and water softeners are generally used with hard well water in my experience. Plus, would they have a softener servicing only the water heater and not the whole line, hot and cold?

My wife, who watches a lot of Miss Marple type mysteries, thought it might be somebody trying to kill his girlfriend who works there, but contaminating a hot water heater seems a far fetched plot. He'd have to know which heater served her break room area and get by the security desk in the lobby. Plus, from what I know of water heaters, getting the contaminants into the heater would not be easy.

Any thoughts? If we hear how it happened, I'll post an update.

I don't know, but 20 people all getting sick at the same
time from hot water sounds very strange. For one thing,
in my world very few people even use hot water to
make drinks or anything else with because hot water is
usually an unfit source. One or two? maybe, but 20,
all on one day were using hot tap water for beverages?
And any contamination would have
to be huge for a cup of cocoa to make people sick. A lot of
times when you have a whole bunch of people sick like
that it turns out most of them were psychosomatic.
Also, I wouldn't assume the test results of an initial
response team are conclusive...... It's possible if it's
the hot water that there is more stuff in there besides
the nitrates.....