For sale: Potentially deadly drums
Dangerous fumes may lurk in industrial barrels sold on Craigslist, other sites
Take an empty steel drum, one that once held a flammable chemical or even something as common as motor oil. Seal it tight, and let it sit. Let the fumes remain bottled up inside for days, months, even years.
Do that, and you may have a virtual bomb — one that can be ignited by a spark from a cutting tool, even static electricity.
Now sell that drum on the Internet. Hundreds, if not thousands, of used and potentially dangerous industrial barrels are listed for sale on Craigslist and other sites where they are advertised as good for everything from rain barrels and trash cans to catfish traps and “smoker” backyard grills. Often they sell for about $20. Sometimes they’re even given away by businesses trying to unload their empties.
Craigslist, which attracts millions of buyers and sellers to its classified-ad website nationwide, said it doesn’t allow the sale of hazardous materials.
Officials with the website did not return Milwaukee Journal Sentinel emails inquiring about used chemical drums.
A Journal Sentinel examination of accidents involving exploding drums and fires found many occurred in backyards and garages across the country and that people handling drums weren’t aware of the danger lurking inside.
The Journal Sentinel found at least 69 deaths and scores of injuries from
“Products containing EPA-regulated chemicals have all been found on Craigslist. These items are dangerous, and all belong either in the hands of a trained and licensed professional or in a hazardous waste disposal.” Garrett Thrasher Pest control expert
drum fires and explosions at homes and businesses — not including drum refurbishing plants — in the past 15 years. Two dozen of those deaths occurred in the past five years.
There is little oversight of this corner of the drum business, according to Paul Rankin, president of the Reusable Industrial Packaging Association, which represents drum recycling companies.
Asked whether there are regulations that prohibit the sale of used chemical drums to consumers, including unlabeled drums that held dangerous materials, he said, “You are asking, in effect, are there any laws that prohibit someone from letting his hungry pet lion loose in your house? The answer is, well, not specifically, but that sort of behavior is a really bad idea.”
Buyer beware
The Journal Sentinel examination of online ads found drums that had contained flammable products and toxic chemicals.
Many used drums come with a dangerous twist: Torn-off labels make it impossible to identify the previous contents. Safety experts said a near-empty drum can be more dangerous than a full one, as less than a cupful of a flammable chemical can create enough fumes in a 55-gallon barrel to explode when ignited by a single spark.
“If you got anything in there that’s flammable at all, what actually burns or explodes isn’t the liquid. It’s the vapor above the liquid,” said Michael Fox, president of Chemical Accident Reconstruction Services, a Tucson company that has investigated drum accidents in which people have been seriously injured or killed.
“I didn’t realize they were selling these things on Craigslist. Oh my God,” Fox said.
Some people have used Craigslist to try to offload old drums of insecticides with missing labels, said Garrett Thrasher, a pest control expert from San Diego. “Products containing EPA-regulated chemicals have all been found on Craigslist,” he said. “These items are dangerous, and all belong either in the hands of a trained and licensed professional or in a hazardous waste disposal.”
In 2012, one seller in Minnesota advertised 64 pounds of mercury, a highly toxic metal that’s subject to strict regulations.
A hazardous waste specialist put an end to that after receiving a tip from someone browsing Craigslist ads.
Dangerous for personal use
The Journal Sentinel examination of exploding drum accidents across the country found case after case involved injuries or deaths at homes.
Near Traverse City, Mich., Charles Lundy was working on a 55-gallon steel drum he planned to use as a wheel for moving his swimming raft.
It was July 20, 2015, and the 70-yearold retiree was brazing — a process similar to welding — an axle onto the old drum.
A former mechanic at a car dealership and a teacher before that, Lundy was very familiar with metalwork.
The drum contained a small amount of gasoline, maybe a few teaspoons, from a gas station his family had owned years earlier.
It was enough.
As the highly flammable vapor caught fire, it shot the top of the drum directly into Lundy’s chest, tearing his aorta loose from his heart.
“People up the road heard the explosion,” said his cousin, Jim Lundy.
Something similar happened this summer in Lawton, Okla., to Gary Hatchett Jr. as he was making catfish traps to raise a little extra money for his family.
It was around 2 a.m. June 8, and Hatchett had just gotten home from work.
He was welding steel barrels together to make the fish traps, something he did under the carport next to his house.
As he started cutting the top off an empty black barrel, it exploded in his face with a blast that punched a hole in the ceiling.
Hatchett suffered a deep cut to his forehead, a possible brain bleed, several fractured facial bones, two broken collarbones and burns to his arms and face. Both of his hands were broken.
The empty drum had contained mineral spirits. It was labeled “highly flammable.”
Risky business
More than 20 million plastic and steel barrels were manufactured in 2015; even more — about 27 million — were processed for reuse or scrapping.
Industry officials prefer that used barrels be properly refurbished and reused, or scrapped, rather than sold to consumers — though an earlier Journal
Sentinel investigation found numerous hazards in barrel recycling facilities.
One Wisconsin ad was for 275-gallon totes that once held oil, antifreeze and water-soluble paper coating. The totes were “pretty close to empty” but weren’t completely clean, the ad said.
One recent Craigslist posting from the Chicago area was for hundreds of drums — priced at $25 to $35 each — that previously contained engine degreaser, wheel cleaner, motor oil and other automotive products.
Large plastic containers that once held toxic chemicals have ended up in gardens.
“The fact that I bumped into three instances in six months tells me it’s more common than I would like,” said Bryce Ruddock of Milwaukee, who spent 32 years in the chemical industry and is a horticulture consultant.
One of the totes Ruddock spotted still had “biocide” labels on it.
The container, he said, “found its way onto Craigslist, where somebody got it for a song,” then donated it to a gardening group.
Many of the ads are for “food-grade” drums and totes, implying that they’re safe for edible products. That designation doesn’t mean much after a drum has been emptied of its original contents and is peddled on the open mar- ket, where it could have been reused for anything.
Exploding drums in the workplace
In Hudson, Wis., Chad Wang nearly died when a steel drum blew up in his face at a golf course maintenance shop where he worked as a mechanic.
Wang was alone in the shop that day, March 22, 2013. He was cutting the lid off the drum, which had contained waste oil and gasoline, when it exploded with enough force to put a large dent in the metal ceiling.
A UPS driver making a delivery found him on the shop floor in a pool of blood with severe head injuries. Wang, 35, didn’t know how long he was on the floor but said it could have been several hours. When police arrived, they wondered whether he had been the victim of an assault; it looked as if someone had beaten him with a fire extinguisher. But there was no sign of a struggle, no footprints leading away from the scene.
Then they found Wang’s blood on the ceiling, his broken safety glasses, the bent cutting torch and the crumpled top of the 55-gallon steel drum.
Wang, a married father of three, was hospitalized for 78 days and underwent surgeries that included removing injured parts of his brain and putting metal plates in his face where every bone but one, his jawbone, was broken.
After months of physical therapy, he works as a welder in a shop that makes steel doors. The accident weighs on his mind when he picks up a cutting torch, but he is getting his life back together.
“I am doing good now,” he said. “As good as I am going to get, anyway.”
On a blustery afternoon in March, Jon Rygiel, 24, a mechanic, was outside his family’s business in Cadott, Wis., cutting the lid off a 55-gallon steel drum to make a trash barrel.
As his cutting torch flame punched a tiny hole in the sealed drum’s lid, it ignited oil fumes trapped inside.
An explosion sent the lid sailing across the street and the torch handle flying into Rygiel’s head where it tore an
8-inch gash. The blast was heard across the town of about 1,500 people. The heat melted his safety glasses.
The accident on March 12, 2015, left Rygiel in a coma for more than a month and living in medical care facilities for more than a year. Doctors gave him a 1
in-10 chance of coming out of a coma and said that even if he did, he would never be able to do much of anything.
He suffered a brain injury, lost sight in his right eye, and had to learn how to walk and talk again.
The 55-gallon steel drum that nearly killed him is still in his family’s transmission shop, a grim reminder of the accident.
Rygiel’s family pushed doctors, hard, to not give up on Jon.
“I feel blessed,” he said.