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"injured a nurse at Mercy Regional Medical Center’s emergency room is called ZetaFlow, a substance used for hydraulically fracturing gas wells.

Houston-based Weatherford Fracturing Technologies supplied the chemical, according to a Materials Safety Data Sheet provided by La Plata County Manager Shawn Nau’s office.

Cathy Behr fell gravely ill in April, several days after treating a worker who walked into Mercy Regional Medical Center doused in ZetaFlow.

Weatherford guards the chemical’s components as a trade secret, and Behr said the company wouldn’t share information with her doctor while she was suffering from heart, lung and liver failure, plus kidney damage and blurred vision.

A Weatherford spokeswoman did not return a call Friday afternoon.

It is not clear where the ill worker was employed or where the original spill happened, and Mercy officials are prohibited by health privacy laws from talking about his condition. It’s not known whether he recovered or even survived.

The worker’s supervisor gave the Materials Safety Data Sheet to Mercy’s emergency room staff. Based on that information and the nauseating smell of the worker’s clothing, nurses summoned the fire department and locked down the ER, but not before Behr had inhaled the chemical fumes.

The Durango Fire & Rescue Authority responded, and firefighters set up fans to clear the air, said spokesman Dave Abercrombie.

"We didn’t do any hazmat cleanup at all. All we did was ventilate," Abercrombie said.

The original spill that sickened the worker didn’t happen in Durango Fire & Rescue Authority’s jurisdiction, he said.

The five-page data sheet advises people handling ZetaFlow to wear goggles and chemical-resistant clothing and boots. Inhalation of the chemical can lead to headaches, dizziness, low blood pressure and low oxygen levels in the blood, according to the data sheet.

Behr has mostly recovered, she said.
Weatherford is a global oil and gas services company that posted $1 billion profits on $7.8 billion in revenue in 2007. Its headquarters are in Houston, with other headquarters planned for Dubai, Singapore and Moscow, according to its 2007 annual report. It has offices in Farmington. "-Read Much more here: