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Chemical leak at Apple's NC Data Center
Around 2:00 PM EDT on Monday, Apple's Maiden, NC, data center suffered a chlorine leak that injured five people. It remains unclear whether the injured were Apple data center employees or construction workers.
Last week, a fire broke out among the solar panels atop the Mesa, AZ, sapphire manufacturing facility that Apple recently bought from GT Advanced. No injuries were reported.
The two events do not seem to be linked, except that Apple is having a bad run of luck with site safety.
Chlorine Gas Leak at Apple Data Center Puts 5 in Hospital
El Reg reports
Emergency crews received a call [June 1] about 2pm local time from the Apple facility on Startown Road, in Maiden, North Carolina. Local news helicopters captured footage of people being given medical attention and oxygen masks outside the facility.
The Catawba emergency services said initially two unknown chemicals were involved in the alert, later stating that it was a chlorine gas leak.
[...] It is speculated that the chlorine was a key component in the facility's water-cleaning facility, perhaps for its water-cooled components.
Original Submissions
(Score: 2, Informative) by Thesis on Wednesday June 03 2015, @12:06AM
Chlorine is used in water treatment facilities to help control organics and to disinfect the water. If they do have a water treatment facility of any kind on-site, they are certainly using one of the many forms of chlorine (liquid, gas, or a compound such as HTH) available for that purpose. The liquid form is quite dangerous, for one volume of chlorine liquid can expand to 450 volumes of gas quite quickly. The hazardous to health exposure level is 10ppm, and all it takes is one good breath of it, and you are down. I've worked with this stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 03 2015, @12:18PM
If they do have a water treatment facility of any kind on-site, they are certainly using one of the many forms of chlorine
They could also be using ozone. (Probably a number of other compounds too as well.)