Emergency Medical Services and hospital staff had to implement their moving and handling proceedures to evacuate 500 people from a hospital in Denver.
A school on the site which is designed for children with breathing difficulties has a swimming pool where hydrochloric acid and chlorine were accidentally mixed. The fumes then spread through tunnels connecting three buildings.
45 people were transferred from National Jewish Health, ironically, a well known centre for respiratory health to other hospitals for treatment.
In 2007, the hospital gained attention when its doctors diagnosed the first non-factory worker case of "popcorn lung" in a man who ate two bags of microwave popcorn a day. The ailment, (bronchiolitis obliterans), had previously been found only in popcorn factory workers.
That same year, National Jewish treated the first American quarantined by the federal government since 1963. The man was first thought to have so-called extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. Subsequent testing showed he had the less dangerous multidrug-resistant TB.
