Accidental release of 45L of polio virus solution into the environment – Belgium (opens in new tab)

My best guess is that a technician accidentally hit the "dump waste" button before the vessel was decontaminated/when it had the wrong solution in it/before the virus was deactivated, etc.

This incident is especially worrisome, but having seen the control boards for one of those giant reactors, I'm not surprised that mistakes are made on occasion.

There was a case of a nurse who injected the wrong compound in a baby and killed it a decade ago (in a military hospital in France, one with a stellar reputation): two viles were strikingly similar (one containing vaccine, the other Potassium) even after being told what those were, you would confuse them.

In this case, I'm assuming concentrated virus is not meant to be near water release, therefore no one noticed until yesterday that there were stored in vats that look like possibly fat-digesting bacteria, or chlorine. 40L is a large quantity: the only container I can think of for those is either a metallic oil drum, or that omnipresent industrial blue plastic barrel (the one you see in that infamous scene in Breaking Bad).

One could even parse that phrase as "a concentrated solution of the stuff we use to create polio vaccin; wasn't used yet, so it should not contain polio virus, but it was in our security zone, so we take this seriously."

Other sources speak of 45 liters of liquid contaminated by live polio virus, which is something different yet.

In summary: I do not know how to interpret that number.

Someone broke something, or opened something, or knocked over something. 45 liters of water is about 100 US pounds, so it was probably a single smallish, somewhat portable storage unit that got affected.

I agree the wording is less than ideal, but I'm not sure there is a 'coverup'.

It was 45L of concentrated polio virus solution. 45L is about the upper limit of a human portable storage vessel for liquids. 10 gallon portable water coolers are common, and we're talking 12 gallons here.

My guess is someone was corner-rolling it to transport it a short distance rather than getting a coworker or using a dolly. All it takes is the lid being improperly secured and all that liquid is going down a floor drain.

The virus doesn't live long outside the body, with the exception being an infected person faeces.

This is likely not receiving much media attention because it's not a big incident. Aside from a few waste treatment workers who'll have to be extra cautious the city will simply cut back on workers going down into the sewers for a couple weeks.

Unless faeces are getting into the water supply, there's negligible risk. And if faeces were getting into the water supply, there'd be a bigger news story here than this incident.

That's an extraordinary claim - I presume you have extraordinary evidence? I mean... this is Hacker News, not a conspiracy website.

Usually the cause is wider than just "Bob didn't follow procedure", and includes things like "Management had Bob working 56 hour weeks in scattered locations which caused fatigue".

People incentivise the wrong thing; they misunderstand the psychology of work[1]; they use poor design; etc.

Other examples include surgeon's resistance to counting equipment before and after surgery - this WHO protocol saves lives and reduces adverse events but some surgeons strongly resisted implementing it.

And then you have outright forging of paperwork. from 1999 - http://www.state.nv.us/nucwaste/news/nn10199.htm

> BRITISH NUCLEAR Fuels has admitted that it has discovered twice as many faked safety checks on its highly dangerous mixed-oxide fuel as previously thought.

> The nuclear fuel was destined to be part of a second export consignment to Japan, where environmentalists are planning huge protests against the scheduled arrival of the first consignment later today.

> The company originally estimated that quality-control data relating to 11 lots of mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel had been falsified, but an internal investigation has identified 22 lots that were forged. British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) launched its inquiry last week after The Independent revealed serious lapses in its quality-control procedures relating to MOX fuel for Japan. Three employees have been suspended.

Humans make mistakes, and people are humans.

In the software world this manifests as redundant-but-required input. Don't ask the user for a value that can be safely calculated or determined an already known value.

...our first choice should be to see if we can remove the hazard—the inherently safer approach. For example, could we use a nonflammable solvent instead of a flammable one?...the second best choice is to control the hazard with protective equipment, preferably passive equipment, as it does not have to be switched on. As a last (but frequent) resort, we may have to depend on procedures. Thus, as a protection against fire, if we cannot use nonflammable materials, insulation (passive) is usually better than water spray turned on automatically (active), but that is usually better than water spray turned on by people (procedural). In some companies, however, the default action is to consider a change in procedures first, sometimes because it is cheaper but more often because it has become a custom and practice carried on unthinkingly. [1]

[1] Trevor Kletz. Still Going Wrong!: Case Histories of Process Plant Disasters and How They Could Have Been Avoided. Burlington, Massachusetts: Gulf Professional Publishing, 2003. ISBN 978-0750677097, page. 208.

You are probably confusing it with smallpox which has been eradicated.

People like you are the whole reason the US' media is complete shit.

That's what you were going to day next, wasnt it?