{"id":219950,"date":"2025-10-17T10:05:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T10:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/219950\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T10:05:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T10:05:09","slug":"five-hospitalised-after-prohibited-substance-in-parcel-sparks-chemical-leak-at-townsville-and-charters-towers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/219950\/","title":{"rendered":"Five hospitalised after ‘prohibited substance’ in parcel sparks chemical leak at Townsville and Charters Towers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Five people have been taken to hospital after a parcel containing a prohibited substance is believed to have caused a chemical leak at two Australia Post locations in Queensland.<\/p>\n

Emergency services were called to a parcel processing facility in Townsville and a post office in Charters Towers around 6.40am today over reports of fumes.<\/p>\n

The Queensland Fire Department said crews identified a leaking contaminated package at Townsville and set up an exclusion zone.<\/p>\n

One staff member was taken to the local hospital in a stable condition for precautionary monitoring. \ufeff<\/p>\n

The Queensland Fire Department said the package had contaminated other parcels, which had been transported to Charters Towers this morning before the leak was noticed.<\/p>\n

Four more staff members at the Charters Towers location were taken to the nearby hospital with mild symptoms of chemical exposure. \ufeff<\/p>\n

9news.com.au understands they have all since been discharged. \ufeff<\/p>\n

Firefighters in HAZMAT equipment have decontaminated \ufeffboth sites, safely contained the affected parcels and conducted atmospheric testing.<\/p>\n

Police also attended both scenes to help.\ufeff\ufeff<\/p>\n

\"\"\/Australia Post warned against sending dangerous, prohibited and restricted goods through the parcel system. (Getty)<\/p>\n

The hazardous substance inside the parcel is believed to be prohibited.<\/p>\n

Australia Post warned against sending dangerous, prohibited and restricted goods through the parcel system and said it would continue to support its affected staff. \ufeff<\/p>\n

“The safety of our team members is our number one priority and Australia Post has strong, well-established safety protocols around these incidents. We continue to support our team members,” an Australia Post spokesperson said. \ufeff\ufeff<\/p>\n

“We remind all customers of the important safety regulations in place around the sending of dangerous, prohibited and restricted goods.”<\/p>\n

Operations at the \ufeffprocessing facility in Townsville are operating as normal, but the post office in Charters Towers remains closed until it is safe to reopen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Five people have been taken to hospital after a parcel containing a prohibited substance is believed to have…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-219950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}