{"id":637251,"date":"2026-10-21T10:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T10:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637251\/"},"modified":"2026-10-21T10:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T10:26:09","slug":"chemical-identified-after-three-sent-to-hospital-in-christchurch-spill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/637251\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemical identified after three sent to hospital in Christchurch spill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A chemical that caused three people to be sent to hospital following a spill in Christchurch last week has been identified <\/p>\n<p>Emergency services were called to Coleridge St in Sydenham before 4pm on Thursday, October 15, after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.1news.co.nz\/2026\/10\/15\/three-people-overcome-by-chemicals-in-christchurch-incident\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">three people were &#8220;overcome by chemicals&#8221;<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>One person was taken to hospital in a critical condition, while two others were in a moderate condition.<\/p>\n<p>Today, a Fire and Emergency NZ spokesperson confirmed the incident involved a spill of around 200L of trichloroethylene.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Trichloroethylene is a liquid primarily used as a solvent to remove grease from metal parts. The chemical had a sweet, chloroform-like odour.  <\/p>\n<p>Moderate exposure could cause headaches, loss of balance, and tremors, according to Australia&#8217;s Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water.  <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Larger exposures will cause dizziness or sleepiness, and may cause unconsciousness at very high levels. Very large exposures may cause irreversible cardiac problems, nerve and liver damage, and death.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>Trichloroethylene has also been identified as a &#8220;probable human carcinogen&#8221; by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.<\/p>\n<p>As it was a central nervous system depressant, the chemical was historically used as an anaesthetic for surgery. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A chemical that caused three people to be sent to hospital following a spill in Christchurch last week&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":637252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[158,111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-637251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-christchurch-canterbury","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/637252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}