Chlorine

U.S. troops in Iraq uncovered a "car bomb factory" near Fallouja this week that contained multiple canisters of chlorine, a potentially lethal gas that has been used in three insurgent attacks over the last month, a top U.S. official in Baghdad told reporters Thursday. Lt. Gen. Raymond T.

A year after a train crash spread a toxic plume of chlorine gas through this small mill town, John Logan, a 60-year-old handyman, continues to inspect property damage. Nails on a side porch are rusting, he noted as he looked at houses recently; a metal roof is stained with brown streaks, and the underside of a heating unit is flaking. Inside many of the homes, residents describe headaches, breathing difficulties and memory loss.

Excessive chlorine levels in a pool in Wausau sent more than 40 children to hospitals, authorities said. The kindergartners at Lincoln Elementary were learning about water safety at a nursing home pool when they started to have difficulty breathing. Officials said a pool circulation pump stopped working and restarted, throwing the chlorine concentration out of balance.

Officials in Alamosa were planning to reopen the city's schools today as crews continued to flush the city water system to purge it of salmonella. The schools have been closed since Tuesday, when officials began pumping high concentrations of chlorine into the water system to flush out the potentially fatal bacteria. The city's water was deemed safe for quick showers but not to drink. The source of the bacteria, which sickened more than 300 people, has not been determined.

"Green" chemistry: An article in the A Section on Friday's about the limitations of more environmentally friendly "green chemistry" said chlorine was a compound; it is an element.

A lethal plume of chlorine leaking from a shattered rail tanker car kept 5,000 residents of this mill town away from their homes and forced officials to bring in repair crews a day after a predawn train wreck and chemical spill killed eight people and sent scores to hospitals for treatment. A rapid response by local emergency officials in the hours after two trains collided on Thursday morning helped evacuate hundreds of residents safely away from a "hot zone" of contamination.

Dawn Smith circled her house nervously on the morning she was allowed to return. A white flower had bloomed while she was away. The mildew that sprinkled the shady side of her house had vanished, as if someone had scrubbed it. And when Smith found her dog, a chocolate Labrador, the animal was alive but had been bleached two shades lighter. On Jan.

Chlorine used in swimming pools may contribute to the surge of childhood asthma in developed countries, Belgian researchers reported in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine. Trichloramine, a byproduct of the interaction between chlorine and organic matter in the water, may be the culprit.