The smoke was everywhere; the smell acrid. What started as a beautiful summer morning in a suburb of Hamilton, Ontario turned into a terrible scene that was the focus of front-page news. The saying, "It's riot as bad as it looks" did not apply. Follow-up investigations would reveal that it was, in fact, far worse than it looked. The fire broke out at a 7,400-square-metre warehouse filled with plastic auto parts, vinyl and polyurethane foam. The smoldering synthetic materials released hydrochloric acid, carbon monoxide gas and cancer-causing substances such as benzene, furans arid dioxins into the environment. Colin Grieve, Joseph Smith and Ed Stanisz of the Hamilton Fire Department were all sent to respond to the Plastimet Recycling plastics fire ? Ontario's largest and most toxic hazardous materials (HazMat) fire to date. The three firefighters were not part of the department's HazMat team or any professional HazMat emergency response company. They represented just a handful of the many responders called in to join the round-the-clock effort to contain the fire, minimize environmental contamination, and protect the public. They are not the kind of people who complain about every muscle pain or every puff of smoke. That's not their way. But even they are talking about how they got sick, they believe, as a direct result of the incident.
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