Sooooo,
Not really sure what I'm looking for. Maybe it's just a rant. But it's been bugging me more and more. I working in a field where there are occasional hazards. I am going to be as unspecific as possible, sorry. When dealing with these hazards, we always have the ability to wear the proper PPE. Level D all the way to Level A. Every form of PPE you can think of, we have. This job we were doing really only needed Level C (Hard hat, steel-toed boots, gloves, respirators with P-100 carts) due to asbestos being in the building.
Anyways, long long story short, the building still had cyanide precipitate in it that was supposed to have been removed long before we were hired to inspect it. Because it was damp and hot and humid, the cyanide was off-gassing hydrogen cyanide. My coworker and I got sick with symptoms of moderate cyanide poisoning and removed ourselves from the building and ended up being okay.
After this was reported, the site was shut down. We had to call the medical line (which didn't seem to understand what happened), and the higher ups have been writing an incident report. But, they are also using this as an opportunity to get another project out of the entity that owns this facility. Our company may be the ones to clean this up. Big win. Wooo. Except….I don't know. I know I'm okay but a few minutes longer and my cowroker and I would have been in a coma and then dead. Our Health and Safety Manager understood how bad this was but he just quit unfortunately. I don't necessarily expect financial compensation. Or an I'm sorry. I don't know what I expect. But a little after action summery and incident report, then telling us that this incident won our company a big job just feels icky. Like helllooooo cyanide poisoning. HYDROGEN CYANIDE. We got CYANIDE poisoning because the client wasn't responsible. We were experiencing symptoms of rapid hypoxia. I feel frustrated.
Has anyone been through an exposure like this? Do you just get over it? Is it silly to dwell on it? I've been through plenty of deadly exposures but I had the PPE for it. We were sitting ducks with this. (if you are my coworker and you see this, JUST LET ME RANT IM STRESSED)