Hazardous Material Spill Cleaned Up by University, City Emergency Personnel

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – University of Arkansas emergency personnel are in the process of cleaning up approximately 500 milliliters of phenol that spilled from a broken container overnight at the Plant Sciences Building on Maple Street.

Officials reported no injuries as a result of the spill.

Approximately 500 milliliters of phenol spilled from the broken container in a cold room in the Plant Sciences Building overnight. The spill was discovered Friday morning by a student, who opened the door to the laboratory, saw the broken container, closed the door and notified emergency personnel at 8:47 a.m. The ventilation system in the room was closed off when the spill occurred.

Emergency personnel subsequently evacuated the building. Personnel from the Office of Environmental Health and Safety, Central Emergency Management Services and the University of Arkansas Police Department contained the spill, moved the material to a safe location, reopened the building and were in the process of determining how to dispose of the material by 11 a.m. Friday.

The Plant Sciences Building is near the core of campus at the intersection of Maple Street and Storer Avenue. It is a four-story structure with about 49,500 square feet of space. It was built in 1978 and houses the departments of horticulture, plant pathology, plant sciences, and crop, soil and environmental sciences.

Phenol has hundreds of different uses in science. In molecular biology, it is used as part of an extraction process to separate DNA from proteins so that scientists can study the selected isolated material.