Florida Department of Environmental Protection, 2007
Hazardous materials can be found in many programs and areas within a school. These include art classrooms; science stockrooms and laboratories; auto, metal and wood shop classes; photography darkrooms; printing rooms; and grounds maintenance and custodial departments. Mercury thermometers or mercury blood pressure sphygmomanometers may be present in nurses’ offices. Often, these chemicals are not well managed: they are stored in the wrong place, in decrepit containers, and alongside other chemicals with which they are incompatible. Because staff often does not know what to do with old chemicals that are no longer used, the chemicals are kept, sometimes for decades, after which time many chemicals deteriorate, become contaminated or even unstable.
