Explosion reported at Texas plastics plant

[alittlelark]

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20051006/us_nm/chemicals_formosa_dc_1

HOUSTON (Reuters) - An explosion and fire occurred at the Formosa Plastics Corp. plant at Point Comfort, Texas, city officials said on Thursday.

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The blast occurred on Thursday afternoon and the resulting fire was reported contained, although officials at Point Comfort City Hall had no other information on the problem.

The company, which did not immediately return a call, reports on its Web site that the plant employed 2,000 workers as of 2002 and produces polyethylene, polypropylene and other products.

Point Comfort is on the central Texas coast, about halfway between Corpus Christi and Galveston.



I heard about it on KPFA originally, the lady was saying that it looked HUGE, and that it was a highly toxic plant.

[babylonsister]

1. I'll check the local news and see if I can update this.

Edit to add: it's all over the local news; big fire, lotsa smoke. No word on injuries or air quality, but plastics are toxic so it doesn't look good. Eruptions of fireballs keep happening...

[LifeDuringWartime]

2. lots of strange things going on today, eh?

:tinfoilhat:

[alittlelark]

3. The next few days may be really interesting...

:-(

[darkism]

4. How many toxic plants have exploded this year?

I count four, including this one.

[Angry Girl]

5. Burning PVC = dioxin.... And this is not Formosa's first either.

A few years ago, an explosion at a Houston plant of the former petroleum firm Phillips 66 killed 32 workers. Another time a huge, thick black fire burned for 28 hours at Formosa Plastics' facility near Seadrift, and the company was not even judged to have committed any violation of environmental regulations. The Formosa factory is one of the biggest of many vinyl-chloride, or PVC, plants in Texas.
http://www.progress.org/2004/elect13.htm

PVC—or polyvinyl chloride, or vinyl—makes dioxin when it burns.
http://www.oriononline.org/pages/om/05-3om/Steingraber.html

People living around the PVC manufacturing facilities are also exposed to the same health hazards as the workers. Worse still, highly inflammable materials such as PVC resin are stored in large quantities on site. A fire in the area could be potentially damaging to people’s health. In 1997, a major fire had gutted Delhi ’s largest waste plastic market, spewing into the atmosphere many dangerous gases such as dioxin which are likely to have been slowly absorbed into the bodies of nearby residents.
http://www.infochangeindia.org/agenda1_05.jsp

[NorthernSpy]

7. and another Formosa Plastics plant blew up in Illinois...

... about a year and a half ago.

http://www.herald-review.com/articles/2005/04/24/news/local_news/1007464.txt

:think:

[ljaycox]

8. This is a PE not PVC plant...

This could cause some serious pricing problems in the material markets, which are tight already. I don't se an enviromental catastrophy here. I hope no one has been injured.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Plant fires not strange in the Houston area. They do this all the time.

It's called "Who cares about plant safety?"