TCE has a distinctive smell - sweet, like cookie dough or donuts. You'll know if you're in an area contaminated by it - I've smelled it at the Google Quad campus and some of the residential areas around it. (The area around Evandale is particularly bad, I've smelled it just driving through some of the residential streets there.) Some of the other chemicals used in semicoductor manufacture are odorless, though.
Most of the contamination is in industrial or office park zones, so I'd be more worried about your workplace than your home, and many of the spills are plain old gasoline (from service stations) which you can have anywhere.
they inject something into the compacted sand of the former quays/piers which makes you think you are getting high. At least it smells like electrical insulating paint i had to work with a long time ago. Open the drum and hold your breath, or get dizzy.
Was a few weeks ago, in the middle of the night while i was on S/Nightseeing tour. Two large tractors with large liquid trailers which had centipede-like appendages on each side, maybe 10 to 12 "legs" and fully automated. Stop, ram the legs into the ground and loudly squirt a minute or so, move on, repeat. The whole area stank! Never seen or heard of something like this before. Apparently it's called Geo Injection to stabilize the ground, or impregnate against water. Nothing about this in the local media at all.
I'm suspicious. Why in the middle of the night at 2 to 3 AM?
A few days ago i've been on tour again, also during the night, maybe 7km/4.35miles downstream while the Elbe was at low tide. Same intense smell, though no construction site in sight.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/brchannel/Map-The-Chemical-Legacy...
TCE has a distinctive smell - sweet, like cookie dough or donuts. You'll know if you're in an area contaminated by it - I've smelled it at the Google Quad campus and some of the residential areas around it. (The area around Evandale is particularly bad, I've smelled it just driving through some of the residential streets there.) Some of the other chemicals used in semicoductor manufacture are odorless, though.
Most of the contamination is in industrial or office park zones, so I'd be more worried about your workplace than your home, and many of the spills are plain old gasoline (from service stations) which you can have anywhere.