Mishandled mercury mess

POST FALLS — A mercury spill in a high school science lab has closed the Immaculate Conception St. Dominic school and church until a hazmat team can handle it.

Kootenai Fire and Rescue EMS Chief Steve Isaacson said the school science department had three 2-ounce bottles of mercury stored in a locker in the science lab.

Isaacson said the bottles were set on a counter while the locker was being cleaned on Monday, and a student decided to play with the mercury.

“They were sitting out and one sophomore student decided to see what it looked like in the palm of his hand,” he said, adding two other students decided to do the same thing. “Some of the mercury spilled on the floor.”

Isaacson said a hazmat team was called in and found that the mercury was tracked all over the school.

“The school has a mercury problem,” he said, adding the team found amounts just over the safe level for exposure, so the Environmental Protection Agency was consulted along with state and local authorities. “After several conference calls, all the state agencies agreed the school needed to be closed until a professional team can get in there and clean it up,” he said.

Isaacson said prolonged mercury exposure can have neurotoxic effects, especially in young children.

According to e-medicine online, “mercury in any form is poisonous, with mercury toxicity most commonly affecting the neurologic, gastrointestinal and renal organ systems. Poisoning can result from mercury vapor inhalation, mercury ingestion, mercury injection, and absorption of mercury through the skin.”

Isaacson said authorities are also testing the homes of the three children who were known to be playing with the mercury, and those homes may also need to be professionally cleaned.

“We have also identified the 15 students that were in the room during the time of the spill. We are contacting the parents of those students today,” Isaacson said. “We are advising them to have their children see a primary physician.”

Information on mercury exposure and letters explaining the spill were also sent to all 205 students, as well as staff and faculty at the school.