Note to self: the next time you need to carry a container filled with hydrochloric acid to work, take a cab.
Tokyo got a scare this morning after a man dropped his bottle of the toxic liquid on a subway train. Several people when to the hospital with minor injuries, but thankfully this chemical clumsiness didn’t cause a major disaster.
Police didn’t arrest the man in question, a 20-year-old stone mason, deciding he didn’t intend to spill his chemicals on the train. Hydrochloric acid has a number of industrial uses, though perhaps carrying it in a bottle on a crowded train isn’t the best transportation strategy.
And because of his butterfingers, New Yorkers aren’t alone in revisiting unpleasant memories of terrorist attacks (as a 9/11 conspirator’s trial comes to Manhattan). Reuters says:
Japan is particularly sensitive to hazards on its trains after a 1995 incident in which members of [the Aum Shinrikyo] religious cult released highly toxic sarin gas on the Tokyo subway, killing 12 and injuring thousands, some permanently.
Related Content:
DISCOVER: Nerve Gas in the Subway, revisiting the 1995 attack
DISCOVER: What Invisible Things Are in the Surfaces You Touch and the Air You Breathe? (in a which a DISCOVER editor finds out how dirty the New York subway system really is.)
80beats: MIT Students Who Hacked Boston Subway Silenced; Report Gets Out Anyway
Image: Wiki Commons / Fg2
November 18th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
Stone masons use hydrochloric acid (muriatic acid) to clean mortar from their stonework.
November 18th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
And as usualinitial reports in Japan blamed foreigners for the incident – reporting that 3 foriegners had been detained by police at the station for dispersing a noxious substance on the train.
December 12th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Thank god no cult here just the Masons they control the world so their is no need for subway attacks.