I would imagine getting suddenly sprayed with cleaning solution from multiple directions is probably sufficiently unpleasant that it will get exaggerated as it's re-told.

And "the entire chamber being -sprayed- with liquid" plus "I felt like I was drowning" could easily get misquoted as well (or misremembered, 20 years ago is certainly more than long enough for me to screw up details).

So my guess is that what actually happened is something of that ilk.