THE contents of an unlabelled container caused a cloud of chemical dust to be blown over a residential area in Heysham last week. People living close to the Solrec plant on Middleton Road contacted the Environment Agency after the chemicals drifted past their homes last Tuesday, July 23. Now the company, which recovers solvents from industrial waste, has been banned from accepting batches of mixed waste until it has procedures in place to identify their nature.

The problem started when a consignment of waste arrived at Solrec with one container unidentified. When opened, the chemicals inside began to react before quick-thinking workers calmed things down.

Chris Morgan, operations director at the company, explained: "We had told this customer that there were several items which we were not able to accept.

"We were assured that these had been removed from the batch but there was one container that wasn't labelled. When it was opened to enable us to analyse what it was it started to react.

"The operative was concerned about that escalating and he used a dry powder extinguisher which is really where most of the dust came from."

The substance is now being held at Solrec until experts at the company can gather enough information to allow them to dispose of the container's contents properly.

Solrec deal with solvents in industrial waste products such as paints, printing inks, glues and resins.

The Environment's Agency's Pollution Inspector for the Heysham area, Chris Smith, said: "We have issued the Prohibition Notice to try to ensure that incidents like this do not occur in future. It will only be lifted when the company has measures in place to deal with these mixed waste batches safely."

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