Lift Up Your Hearts!

Last night our neighbors called to ask if we had noticed a terrible odor.  They had just returned home after a few hours away and smelled something awful as soon as got out of the car; it was so strong they couldn't tell if it was widespread or localized.  We stepped outside of our house and smelled no more than the normal hot-and-humid Florida vegetation smells.

Until we approached their house, that is. We were then hit with what was, indeed, a foul odor.  But not, I was certain, a what-died-in-here? odor; it was something chemical rather than biological.  Don't get started on the truth that biology is also chemistry; I'd say it was an inorganic smell rather than organic, but that's not true either.  I know what I meant, and you would, too, if you'd smelled it.

But where was it coming from?  Although the house and the yard were permeated with the smell, it seemed pretty clear that the garage was the source, not that that narrowed the possibilities down much.  Diligent dog-like sniffing could not pinpoint the origin.  Well, not really "dog-like"; our noses were not in danger of physical contact with anything, and we made frequent retreats outside for fresh air.  I did more thinking than sniffing, myself, in an effort not to complicate the scents by vomiting on the garage floor.

My first reaction was "propane," but a brief opening of the valve of a known propane tank proved that the scents were not the same.  There's no gas line to the house, so it couldn't have been a gas leak. Finally, my eyes lit on a container of weed killer, and I had a "Eureka!" moment:  Insecticide.  The smell was the chemical reek left in the wake of some pest control operations.

With that in mind, it was not long before our neighbors found—behind closed doors, in a box, on a shelf in the back of a cabinet—a leaking bottle of malathion.  They carefully bagged it up, removed the wooden shelf onto which it head leaked, and set it all outside to be taken on the morrow to the county's toxic waste facility.  Mystery solved, and the garage and house could begin to air out and detoxify.

The atmosphere in the neighborhood, on the other hand, deteriorated rapidly.  Even bagged up, the permeation of the malathion was amazing.  After returning home, opening either the front or the back door immediately let in an overwhelmingly foul odor.  We turned off the air conditioner so as not to bring outside air into the house.  I, worried about what harm our exposure might have done, and whether or not our neighbors should spend the night with us instead of in their polluted house, turned to Google.  I was somewhat reassured that malathion is not one of the banned pesticides, but still in use, and that we'd probably already received far greater exposure through mosquito-control spraying.

We had planned to go to bed early, but the adventure had already scotched that idea.  Furthermore, since I'd read that symptoms of malathion poisoning can take 30 minutes to a couple of hours to appear, we decided to stay up a bit longer and watch the final episode of Season Two of Monk.  (Monk is our latest Netflix TV show venture about which I intend to post at some point; we tried it at the recommendation of a friend, and because Season Four of Numb3rs is not yet available.  So far we have found it very enjoyable.)

If the point was to keep us awake, it succeeded.  If the point was to distract us from worrying, it was the wrong show to watch.  The lyrics of the theme song,  in case you don't know it, are thus:

It's a jungle out there
Disorder and confusion everywhere
No one seems to care
Well I do
Hey, who's in charge here?
It's a jungle out there
Poison in the very air we breathe
Do you know what's in the water that you drink?
Well I do, and it's amazing
People think I'm crazy, 'cause I worry all the time
If you paid attention, you'd be worried too
You better pay attention
Or this world we love so much might just kill you
I could be wrong now, but I don't think so
It's a jungle out there

When they got to "poison in the very air we breathe," I took notice, and by "if you paid attention, you'd be worried to" I'd decided to make a call to Poison Control.  Our neighbors were going to call the fire department, which in the past has been very helpful with oddball situations (including the time an insect set off our smoke alarm), but there is no longer an off-hours phone number, and it didn't seem like something to bother the 9-1-1 folks about.  Fortunately, Poison Control is a different system, and they were not only avaiable, but very helpful.  We were able to sleep well, and our neighbors were glad to know that they didn't have to evacuate.  Here's a tip from Poison Control that I woudn't have thought of:  Today's kitty litter is very useful for cleaning up liquid chemical spills.

This morning when we awoke a sniff out the back door revealed nothing but a chlorine smell from the pool, but the front yard was as bad as ever.  I find that pretty amazing.  That's powerful stuff!  We're fine now, though, as the offending substance has been properly dealt with.  I'm very glad it all happened in a situation in which it was discovered quickly—no more than a couple of hours from leak to clean up.  What if our neighbors had been on vacation, or even just gone for a normal work day?

I's a jungle out there.