Courtaulds

I believe that the worst thing wasn't the pure acetone, which smells quite pleasantly of pear drops in an intoxicating, explosive way but the acetic acid. However bad it was outside the factory, the pong at the effluent plant within the site was much worse.

I had a vac job on the heavy gang at Old Church Road, mid-1960's. I was employed by a sub-contractor during the "Coventry holiday shut-down" to replace pipework and condensers sometimes over 50 ft up with no safety harness! Often a pipe would not be completely empty and as it swung, balanced in a chain hoist I had clambered up the steelwork infrastructure to put in place, it would empty black tar-like liquid over my jeans. After a week or so my jeans and shoes started to fall apart. Last time I looked I am still attached to my legs though! I remember: the heavy acetone vapour of the spinning shops that you entered via air-locks; the noise of the compressors in Acetone Recovery; dismantling the furnace that made acetic anhydride (even stronger smelling than acetic acid) while the firebricks were still hot. "Health & Safety" meant one was left to one's own and workmates' devices! It was a great gang to work with, who protected me from my inexperience, and taught me respect of those who used their wits to solve real problems. If, like me, you have eliminated carbohydrates by eating a "keto" diet acetone is a naturally produced substance in the body; otherwise, it is a sign of diabetes. The vapour could suffocate but it is not toxic.

My word Choirboy you've been through it!

Regarding Courtaulds and health: As a child who played in the playground of Little Heath Junior school in the late sixties, I can remember constantly smelling of what we then thought was vinegar, but now know to be acetate. I also remember a number of pupils having to be transferred to Corley Fields special school, which we then understood to be a school in the countryside for children with health problems / breathing difficulties, a coincidence? I don't think so! This especially came to mind when I was diagnosed, in my mid thirties, with thyroid cancer! My surgeon at the time told me this was unusual in one so young but that he had recently had a number of ladies around my age with the same disease. Again coincidence, I really don't think so! I would love to know if they too had played in the shadow of that hideous tower spitting out its deadly poison?

What you could smell was acetic acid, yes vinegar, one of the raw materials. Acetate was the finished product, a type of plastic made from wood pulp. The chimney was for the oil burning power station. The tower was a cooling tower. There was pollution in the air in the 60s from factories and homes. I'm not sure how much progress there was cleaning it up by the late 60s.

Yes, I recall that vinegar odour. Didn't there used to be a Coutlands Acetate facility along Old Chuch Road?

Yes that's right Mike. Started out as British Celanese, then Courtaulds Acetate, then Courtaulds Chemicals, then Akzo Nobel and finally Celanese Acetate.

The process used at the Old Church Road site made acetate viscose. The process is described at how acetate fiber is made and the escaping vapours would smell strongly of vinegar and sweet smelling acetone. Not particularly toxic but maybe long term inhalation has bad effects. An article in the https://www.birminghamdispatch.co.uk/p/the-looming-tower-did-a-coventry implies that carbon disulphide was used perhaps at the Foleshill Road works that I have no knowledge of. If wood is used as the source of the cellulose for making viscose the lignin must be dissolved using caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) solution and carbon disulphide which has the very unpleasant smell of rotting cabbages. It is very toxic and can be explosive. (I remember reading of a worker repairing a tank of CS2 that exploded and his body was found nearly a mile away!). https://www.yarnsandfibers.com/textile-resources/regenerated-fibers/rayon/rayon-.... The Old Church Road site did not only make acetate viscose. I recall a large tanker arriving containing acrylonitrile, used to make plastics such as ABS and artificial rubber. This has a irritant choking odour and I remember working with the gang when somebody a distance away called out to us "RUN!" just before we were caught in a cloud of choking vapour that may have been acrylonitrile.

In early 1973 my then wife to be and I were looking for a house to buy. We did not know our way around the north side of Coventry so we often went out on little trips just to see where the houses for sale actually were. I distinctly remember looking at a house in Old Church Rd, somewhere near to Profitt Avenue. It was fairly early in the morning and was just a bit misty. We both realised that the mist had a very strong smell of acetone. We did not bother to book an appointment to view that house. In future years that same stink was still there and we often remembered how glad we were to have made that exploratory trip. A few years later, I recall conversations, possibly in the pub, about the Flixborough disaster where a chemical plant exploded and people were killed. The general opinion was that either the council or the police had a disaster management plan should anything similar occur around the Courtaulds and British Celanese plants. Rumour had it that these plans would be managed from the police station in the city centre rather than the much nearer one in Stoney Stanton Rd. Other rumours concluded that if the British Celanese plant exploded then the resulting blast would affect a wide area, right up to the M6 northwards and a large swathe of the city southwards, including the police station at Stoney Stanton Rd. I never saw any evidence to back up these stories, but the pub talk was amongst people who lived and worked in the area, so who knows?

There was some truth to those stories. The place was called a six fire engine site. If there was even a false alarm of a fire they had to send six appliances just as a starter. There were regular practice sessions with the fire service and my mate caught one of the firemen smoking near a sign warning of the explosive atmosphere. I joined the year the flake department shut down - the bit that turned the paper like substance into the first stage of plastic. That ended the terrible vinegar smell but the acetone was still used in large quantities. The weaving had gone before I started, as had all the other concerns that Choirboy mentioned. There were still nasty chemicals like sulphuric acid and caustic soda but they weren't airborne. The thing that most factories and even schools had was asbestos. When I bought my current house I was slightly alarmed when I found out that even early Artex had it in, but the effect on my ceilings turned out to be just textured wallpaper.

Just before my brief employment at British Celanese the coal fired boilers had been replaced by an oil? fired one but the old boilers had not yet been dismantled. There was an Edwardian static steam engine next to the coal boiler that rotated continually, now fed with steam from the new boiler. It gave a "chuff" every couple of seconds. I was told this was part of the fire sprinkler system and the steam engine would go flat out to distribute water to critical parts of the plant if there was a fire. My 'A level' in chemistry told me there would be a disaster for Coventry should a fire start in what I estimated to be thousands of barrels of acetone and other chemicals stored in the open next to the canal. I was warned that if anyone was caught smoking on the site they would be sacked immediately and escorted off the site by security. Fortunately, smoking was not one of my bad habits. In keeping with the knowledge of the time, the pipes carrying hot reagents were all lagged with what I expect was asbestos fibre. Since none of us dismantling the pipes for maintenance used masks I count myself lucky only to have been exposed for one university summer vacation. Helen, I discovered that the slates of my Edwardian house were caulked with asbestos cement just as I was about to convert the spacious attic into a hobby room for my children!

I worked for Courtaulds at Old Church Lane. From September-1987 to September-1988. Sadly I had to leave due to health reasons. I was first trained as a Doffa at No.1 Shop. The dismal. Damp and horrible smelling place it was. I was working in Shop No. 1 for 2 months, before being transferred to No.2 shop. At first I did not want to work in No.2 shop, because I had got used the old knackered machines in No.1. 3 weeks after working in No.2 shop. I got to enjoy working in Shop No2, and I got on very well with my work mates too.

Hi Forest63, welcome to the forum. Was doffing part of the yarn spinning on the main part of the site (to the west of the canal)? I think that there was weaving on the other side of the canal but that was gone before I started. The other three parts were the flake plant (raw material), the plastics at the north end and filter tow which I seem to remember being roughly next to the yarns.