I was a 30-year-old quality project manager on a continuous metal processing line. We coated metal for a broad range of consumer and industrial products. Just like many metal-processing facilities, particularly back then, we used a bunch of processes involving chemistry of varying evilness for a range of reasons.

One process was supposed to be, and normally was, just hot and steamy, so the steam was vented to the air. Any involved nastiness was supposed to be contained. And it had been, until for some reason that’s lost to me with time and grey hair, we suddenly started spewing a small but growing amount of process offal out of an exhaust vent. It may have been a leaky enclosure, maybe a line speed increase, whatever, but it was soon obvious where the junk was coming from and that a more aggressive process enclosure would take care of this issue.

The nasty stuff was heavy, so it didn’t go much farther than the neighboring business’ parking lot. Unfortunately, once on the cars, the little hard white pieces of stuff stuck tenaciously, making the cars’ owners more than a little cross. Which was the reason we’d found out about it pretty quickly and before it became a truly serious problem.

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