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We all knew the DPL’s Central Library on 13th and Broadway is a great place to look at porn and catch a sink-shower when you’re feeling a little ripe. But a place to bring your chemistry set?
At 12:49 p.m., Denver Fire responded to the library on a hazardous materials call and quickly identified several patrons and staff who were experiencing respiratory symptoms due to fumes emanating from a spot of carpet on the second floor, says Lt. Phil Champagne. Champagne says someone managed to spill a small portion of some corrosive material on the carpet, which reacted with the flooring and kicked up some noxious fumes. The library was evacuated for about an hour as a precaution as the hazmat crew identified the substance on the carpet as a 14ph substance (that’s a corrosive acid, not a base, for all you chem geeks), and then neutralized and cleaned up the offending chemical spill. Hardly a need to involve the EPA, but still one of the more caustic episodes the library has experienced since the incendiary uproar over those Mexican comic books a few years back.