PARIS — Two hazardous chemicals found during a routine inspection of a physics lab at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School have been removed, Superintendent Rick Colpitts told directors this week.

He said the chemicals were bromine and iodine, which were removed because they had expired dates. They were  disposed of at a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency-approved site in Tennessee.

The substances were identified during an annual inspection conducted in certain areas of the school district to inventory chemicals and ensure they are properly stored. Every public school in the state is required to submit an annual inventory of hazardous chemicals kept on site to the Department of Education and take other measures to ensure proper and safe storage of chemicals.

The district paid Maine Lab Pack/MLI Environmental Inc. of Scarborough $5,200 for disposal of the two chemicals, plus $2,500 for the disposal of boiler-cleaning material that was missed on an earlier inspection. The total cost was approved by SAD 17 directors at their meeting Monday and the money taken from the contingency fund.

Chemicals are commonly used and stored in Maine’s public schools in areas such as science labs, custodial closets, maintenance shops and vocational education classrooms. They are used routinely to clean schools, and in automotive repair, bodywork courses and science courses.

Officials say some chemicals go undetected for years because classroom use and teachers’ knowledge about the substances change.

Colpitts said the bromine and iodine went unnoticed for at least seven years because, unlike a chemistry lab, the physics lab normally does not have chemicals stored in it. All chemicals in the school district are controlled, managed and locked in safety cabinets, he said. The district also has a safety plan in place to handle the hazardous materials.

Bromine is considered a high-hazard chemical by the DOE and one it says should be substituted for a less hazardous substance. The chemical was first used in the 19th-century daguerreotype photography process.

Nelson Baillargeon, facilities director, said Maine Lab Pack/MLI Environmental Inc. conducts chemical audits annually and assists in the training school personnel.

“They also review all science chemical orders to ensure no chemicals are ordered that the state DOE has deemed to be unsafe in a school,” Baillargeon said.

He said the company reviews the science labs and art rooms at the Oxford Hills Middle School and the science and biology labs, art room at the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School, as well as any Oxford Hills Technical School shops that would normally use chemicals, such as automotive repair, auto collision, graphic arts and building trades.

The issue of identifying and safeguarding hazardous chemicals in public schools has been ongoing for years.

The state sponsored a limited school chemical clean-out in the 1990s, but the program was voluntary and did not include any teacher training.

In 1990, Edward Little High School in Auburn was shut down for a day when a jar containing titanium tetrachloride, a hazardous chemical, exploded in a fireproof cabinet, forcing school officials to suspend classes for a day. The explosion happened in the middle of the night in a second-floor chemistry lab, where the chemical had been stored for more than 20 years. No one was injured. 

In 2004, a two-year, clean-out program, originally developed by the Department of Environmental Protection to get mercury out of Maine schools, uncovered stockpiles of potentially dangerous chemicals, including radioactive chemicals, in schools across the state.

A DEP official said at the time that among the most disturbing finds were old bottles of bromine and chlorine, chemicals used to make mustard gas, that were hidden away in “a host of schools.”

In 2005, the Legislature approved a measure directing the Department of Education and the Department of Environmental Protection to implement procedures to remove hazardous materials from Maine schools.

Through this initiative, both departments identified 157 schools with chemicals whose risk outweigh their educational utility in secondary schools, according to a 2006 Report to the Joint Standing Committee on Natural Resources. The chemicals were removed, and management plans for all chemicals were established in all schools.

ldixon@sunjournal.com

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