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What do viruses and habanero peppers have in common?

The question goes to the heart of how environmental insurance is evolving to respond to the breadth of pollution exposures.

By Ivy Riggs | Updated on October 07, 2014
A handful of habanero peppers on a Denver school playground resulted in evacuation, shutdown and decontamination.

No, that question is not a lead-in to a tasteless joke.  In fact, for those who have reason to buy, sell, litigate, or underwrite environmental insurance, the question is profoundly relevant. And the answer—“more than you might think”—may come as a shock to those who have never considered insuring their potential liabilities for contamination.

Consider the stories of two different schools. The first involves Jefferson County Open School, a Denver-area institution that last April saw multiple students hospitalized after an unknown substance provoked a severe allergic response in at least 30 attendees. Administrators promptly evacuated the entire facility and cancelled classes for the remainder of the day. When firefighters and hazardous material response teams arrived, their investigation found the culprit was a handful of habanero peppers on the playground. Naturally occurring oils in these peppers (typically measuring more than 100 times hotter than a jalapeno pepper) were believed to have contaminated both outdoor playground equipment and interior building surfaces. After undergoing a thorough decontamination process, the school re-opened the following day. No long-term negative health effects were reported for any of those hospitalized.

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