Hazard Apparel : Here’s what the smartly dressed environmental hazard worker is wearing this season.

It is Halloween and a time for dress-up. For some people in Ventura County, dress-up is an everyday thing, and very serious to boot. These people follow an environmental dress code. Today’s column is about what the smartly dressed environmental hazard worker is wearing this season.

Carolyn Means is a chemical engineer and president of a 10-person consulting engineering firm, West Coast Environmental Inc., in Ventura. She gave me a sort of fashion scorecard--”class A, B, C and D apparel”--and a warning.

“If you see fire crews getting into a self-contained suit with air tanks and breathers,” she said, “that’s class A and you should be concerned about approaching the area. Fight your tendency to walk up and ask what’s going on until they’ve come back out of the area and taken off the breathing gear.”

In other words, if they’ve decided not to inhale something in the air, neither should you. “Reporters at the Seacliff hydrazene spill walked in and got exposed,” she said.

Class B, C and D are outfits made of thinner material, usually Dupont Tyvek, an impermeable fabric used to make Federal Express mailers. What varies is the facial covering. Class B involves a mask with bottled air and C a mask with a filter system.

Now we’re down to Class D and closer to what you and I could safely consider eco-fashion. Fred Kennelley, general manager of Alameda Industries, a Newbury Park firm, sells outfits for a different reason than you might think.

Every month high-tech outfits in the area buy a couple thousand disposable outfits “to protect the environment of the product from the environment of the employee.”

Pharmaceuticals and microcircuits are being manufactured locally in “clean rooms” where mere humans who might have colds or dandruff must “suit up” before entering.

“When they’re all garbed and masked, it’s difficult to tell one person from another, so one company asked us to color code with special tabs,” Kennelley said. This was intended to keep those who have been working in a department with certain kinds of chemicals away from those working with incompatible chemicals.

No matter what happens around the company lounge, you’ll be happy to know that, according to Wendy Haddock of the sheriff’s office of emergency services, Ventura County has “the largest hazardous materials handling unit in the world.” She’s referring to the department’s semitrailer truck. The hazardous materials team, which uses the truck, has contracts with city fire departments throughout the county and supplements the work of Ventura and Oxnard fire departments.

The team shows up at hazardous spills and fires in class A gear, and gets things under control. Then the hazardous materials crew from the county health department moves in to clean up the area so it’s fit for human habitation.

The haz-mat crew arrives with a sort of high-powered “Mr. Wizard kit,” said spokesman Steve Kephart, and tests air, water and soil to learn if it’s appropriate to work lower on the safety dress scale--at B or C.

“We dress up after we get there,” he said.

He and Haddock are active in a nationwide government and industry group called Community Awareness and Emergency Response. They meet monthly with the Ventura County chapter to work on projects such as training exercises, computer inventory of chemicals at area companies, public education and outreach to advise citizens what to do in hazardous materials incidents.

The group’s public information efforts are needed, it seems. A member in Carlsbad, environmental engineer Bob Lutzenberg was doing a routine soil test in class D apparel in the bushes behind a house. A man from next door approached, pointed to the suit and asked, “Does this mean we’re all going to have to sell and move out of the neighborhood?”

“No,” said Lutzenberg, “this is just safety apparel because of pest killer residue in there which I don’t want to take home on my clothes.”

Kephart and Means both pointed out that anyone entering a crawl space, spray-painting in a poorly ventilated place, or even working with old wood and flaky paint would be advised to use a disposable Tyvek suit and a paper mask or disposable respirator. Medical and industrial supply companies such as Zee Medical Service in Ojai carry such things.

And Carl Lineberger, a colleague of Kennelley’s, even gave fellow golfers class D rigs so they wouldn’t have to stop golfing when it rains. Lineberger told me that he had considered wearing one of his own outfits on Halloween. I told him to have his kids run ahead of him to warn people who might be thinking, “There goes the neighborhood.”

* FYI

Ventura County Environmental Health Department (hazardous substance complaints), call 654-2813.

Speakers bureau of Community Awareness and Emergency Response in Ventura County (David Abernathy), call 488- 4461.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Office of Emergency Services (hazardous substance spills), call 654-2551.