Durham County Emergency Management dispatched a bomb squad to remove potentially explosive material Wednesday from a storage building at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center Wednesday afternoon.
Authorities responded to a call from the hospital reporting that a crystallized form of picric acid had been found in a research facility behind the main hospital, said Sara Haigh, staff assistant to the Medical Center director.
"We had some picric acid, a chemical used in our research, and we found some crystals on it," she said. "When it's dry, it can be explosive."
Haigh said the hospital evacuated employees from the building where the crystals were found until the bomb squad cleared the area. Patients in the building were not asked to leave.
Daily procedures at the main hospital were also not affected by the threat of the explosive chemical, Haigh said.
"It didn't affect routine operations of the hospital," she said. "They were here an hour, and after, everything went back to normal."
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