Royal Water in Brooklyn

Alone, neither hydrochloric nor nitric acid will dissolve the "noble metals" gold and platinum, but a mixture of the two will. So to this potent corrosive the medieval alchemists gave the name aqua regia--royal water. Last week in Brooklyn, fumes from royal water knocked out scores of factory workers and firemen. left several in hospitals, threatened with severe aftereffects.

In the Williamsburg section, an American Cyanamid Co. tank truck backed up to the Radio Receptor Co.'s plant (which makes electronic equipment) to deliver 500 gallons of nitric acid. Driver Benjamin Sidla hooked up his hose to a pipe indicated by employees, started pumping. After a few minutes, a man rushed up from the basement, yelled to Sidla: "You'd better stop. The fumes are terrible down there." Somehow the nitric acid had been diverted into a 3,000-gallon tank containing hydrochloric. Result: royal water, which was already beginning to dissolve the tank's rubber lining, eating away a flange where the pipe entered, and emitting noxious fumes.

Radio Receptor employees staggered to the street, coughing and choking, their eyes burning. Some collapsed, some vomited. Emergency squads gave oxygen, took dozens of workers to four hospitals; 18 were kept overnight, and some longer. Assistant Deputy Fire Chief Walter C. Wood cleared a two-block area around the plant, kept residents out until 3 a.m., when he thought it was safe.

Meanwhile, Wood and his firemen went into the basement tank room, tried to stop the leak with a new flange. When the air cylinders for their masks were empty and they came up to the street to change them, their faces and necks showed bright red acid burns; 38 were affected, one had to be hospitalized. Because aqua regia attacks pipes and pumps so avidly, it took three days to find resistant equipment to load it into a tank truck for neutralization and disposal in New Jersey.

At week's end. Chief Wood and six firemen fell sick. Doctors at first feared a dangerous late reaction to the fumes, which can cause suffocation, rated the men lucky that this did not develop.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.