At approximately 10:25 pm on August 28, an explosion occurred at the Unit of the Bayer CropScience Plant in Institute, West Virginia, US. Federal officials are investigating the cause of a plant explosion that shook an area west of Charleston, W.Va., hurling a fireball hundreds of feet into the air, killing one worker and injuring a second in the explosion, and was transferred to a burn center.
The damaged section of the plant produces Larvin, an insecticide used on multiple crops including corn, cotton, and vegetables. The plants emergency sensors did not indicate that any substantial toxic chemicals had been released outside of the plant. Among many other chemicals, the Bayer CropScience plant produces methyl isocyanate, which killed at least 15,000 people in the infamous leak at a Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal, India, in 1984. That chemical was not involved in the explosion, said Dale Petry, the emergency-management director for Kanawha County, and was stored in steel-wrapped underground containers. A spokeswoman for the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, Kathy Cosco, said that the primary chemical involved, methyl isobutyl ketone, is highly flammable but not especially toxic. Air monitoring found no sign of dangerous chemicals, either on or off the site about 10 miles west of Charleston, Bayer said. A team from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board planned to begin work at the site. The explosion occurred in a section of the plant where waste products are treated before disposal, Bayer spokesman Mike Wey said. The unit had been closed for maintenance and was restarted earlier in the week, he said.
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