By David Mitchell
The Advocate
BATON ROUGE, La. 鈥� Four workers at a Baton Rouge chemical plant were hospitalized Tuesday night when a storage cylinder broke, releasing toxic ammonia gas, fire officials said.
The leak at Formosa Plastics鈥� complex on Scenic Highway happened around 8:40 p.m., Emergency Medical Services said. Two of the four workers were in critical condition with inhalation burns.
Remember 2 Things: Caring for airway burns and managing swelling
Investigators with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened an inquiry into the incident that led to the injuries, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. The agency hasn鈥檛 issued any worker safety violations against Formosa in Baton Rouge since at least Jan. 1, 2019.
Baton Rouge Fire Department officials estimate the cylinder had a capacity of 150 pounds, though it is not clear how much ammonia was released. They said the ammonia gas likely quickly dissipated in the air and posed no danger to the broader public.
Curt Monte, spokesman for Baton Rouge Fire, said the cylinder failure wasn鈥檛 part of the process equipment that would have led to a continuing leak.
Officials with the state Department of Environmental Quality said the release did not have an impact off Formosa鈥檚 complex along the Mississippi River, just north and west of the ExxonMobil refinery and chemical complex.
A nitrogen-based chemical, ammonia is prevalent naturally in the air, water and soil in extremely low concentrations. But in concentrated amounts, the colorless, pungent gas can be a caustic hazard when it hits the moisture of the eyes, skin and upper respiratory tract, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and industry safety reports.
The Formosa Plastics complex has been in Baton Rouge since the early 1980s and makes polyvinyl chloride, a key material in consumer plastic products like plumbing pipes and food wrap. The facility has units that make PVC and vinyl chloride monomer, and recover hydrochloric acid from chemical processes by burning hazardous waste byproducts from PVC manufacture.
The facility has had several minor leaks in the past four years, often of the human carcinogen vinyl chloride and probable carcinogen ethylene dichloride.
Many of the most recent leaks were smaller than the required reporting thresholds and unlikely to lead to violations, a state database of company estimates says, but for many years prior, the complex drew the attention of state and federal regulators for alleged emissions and other violations.
The plant remains in noncompliance over high-priority state air quality violation allegations leveled in 2009 that include exceedances for carcinogenic vinyl chloride in the early to mid-2000s and breakdowns in how the company failed to inspect emergency relief valves over decades, federal and state databases show.
It is wasn鈥檛 clear why the company remains in noncompliance, but EPA officials say the tag can linger until all terms of a settlement or compliance order are completed, even after underlying problems are corrected. Nearly a decade and a half ago, Formosa told regulators it had found a way to inspect and repair the more than 25-year-old relief valves.
No estimate was available Wednesday for how much ammonia escaped into the air Tuesday night.
Officials with Formosa didn鈥檛 immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
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