The Yunlin County Government on Wednesday issued a NT$1 million (US$31,460) fine to Formosa Plastics Group after allegations that a gas leak at its massive petrochemical complex sickened almost 100 people.
The county’s Environmental Protection Bureau also cited the Air Pollution Prevention Act (空氣污染防制法) in ordering a naphtha cracker in the complex to halt operations.
An odor filled the air on Thursday last week in Mailiao Township (麥寮) and neighboring Taisi Township (台西), home to the group’s petrochemical complex, which comprises more than 60 factories.
DIZZINESS
Sixty-three students and teachers at five public elementary schools reported dizziness and nausea, the county government said.
The number of sick had increased to 85 by the next day, the county said.
On Monday, Taisi Township again reported a strange odor, with 10 elementary school students and teachers seeking treatment.
“Luckily, they all recovered after being taken to hospitals for medical treatment,” a county official at the Education Department said.
Local media cited the bureau as saying its investigation found that Monday’s odor was due to botched procedures at a naphtha storage tank numbered T8506.
CHEMICAL LEVELS
Inspectors detected abnormally high concentrations of propane and sulfur dioxide at the plant, with propane concentrations several times higher than the acceptable level, and sulfur dioxide concentrations of 311 parts per billion (ppb), above the allowable maximum of 250 ppb.
Bureau director Lai Tung-hung (賴東鴻), however, said the final report on the investigation into the cause of the odor and illnesses would not be available for another week.
Formosa Plastics said that the tank did not contain either of the chemicals in question, adding that gas samples from the factory and areas around the tank also proved normal.
The conglomerate criticized the county for blaming the petrochemical complex for the odor without publicizing the results of its probe.
‘UNFAIR’
“It’s not fair to issue an accusation without data,” a spokesman for the enterprise said.
In July, two fires broke out at the petrochemical complex, causing a great deal of damage to agricultural production and igniting residents’ anger over long-term air pollution they said was a result of operations at the complex.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching