2020 Not Getting Better: Gas Leak At Pharma Plant Kills Two, 2nd Mishap In 2 Months In Vizag
At least two people were killed and four taken ill after benzimidazole gas leaked from a pharma plant in Visakhapatnam's Parawada Pharma City.The gas leak was reported at the Sainor Life Sciences plant when benzene gas was being pumped into the reactor.?
About 30 workers were in the factory at the time of the incident. The deceased persons were senior employees of the company. Those who fell sick after inhaling the gas have been admitted to a hospital in Gajuwaka, with one of them being put on ventilator support.?
Though the leak has been brought under control, district authorities have said the pharma unit has been temporarily shut down as a precautionary measure.?The shift in-charge and the chemist were the first to fall victim and it took a while before the other workers found them gasping for breath. They died on the way to the hospital.Four other workers working in the reactor unit inhaled the gas and fell sick.?
There was a similar incident in the same plant a few years ago where three workers were killed.?
This is the second industrial mishap in Vizag in two months.Last month 2 people were killed and over 1000 taken ill after a gas leak at a chemical plant owned by LG polymers.The poisonous gas began leaking from the plant's two 5,000-tonne tanks that had been unattended due to the lockdown around 3 am, catching residents who were asleep off guard.?
The second industrial accident in Vizag has taken a political turn with TDP chief N Chandrababu Naidu terming the situation as alarming and demanded a probe into the latest toxic gas leakage accident."An alarming situation as another poisonous gas leak incident occurred even as the people of the port city were yet to recover from the shock of the LG Polymers tragedy," he said.?
May saw a series of industrial accidents, as many factories that had remained closed for two months due to the lockdown resumed operations.The day after the incident in Vizag, there was a gas leak in a paper mill in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh and a boiler blast in Neyveli, Tamil Nadu. On 22 May, a major fire had broken out in a chemical factory in Pune.Last week an ammonia gas leakage accident at a storage tank at SPY Agro Industries in Kurnool district of Andhra Pradesh had killed one and injured a couple of workers.
