NITRO, W.Va. — “I was on my way to a doctor’s appointment the day of the explosion at the Catalyst Refiners plant. Even with the AC on and my windows up, I could smell the strong rotten egg odor,” Militant supporter Earl Christy, who lives nearby, told the paper. “In the doctor’s office the TV was broadcasting a special report. A woman in the waiting room told me that the ER in the nearby WVU Medicine Thomas Memorial Hospital was packed with victims.”
When a tank was being cleaned prior to being decommissioned, WGN-TV reported, a violent chemical reaction took place between nitric acid and the chemical M2000A, creating deadly hydrogen sulfide gas, which affected workers instantaneously. Two were killed, another was critically injured, and as many as 30 or more, including seven first responders, had to seek medical attention. Hydrogen sulfide is known for its rotten-egg smell. Everyone in a 1-mile radius, including the campus of West Virginia State University, was told to shelter-in-place.
The plant, owned by New York-based Ames Goldsmith Corp., uses caustic chemicals to reprocess silver.
“We have to stop poisoning the air,” Elvin Campbell, an Iraq military veteran with a chemical disability from his experiences there, told the Militant outside his house. “It’s a global problem.”
Sumitra Ghale, a student at West Virginia State, told the Militant that a school emergency siren is tested the last Wednesday afternoon of every month. When the siren sounded April 22, she said, “We thought it was just a test, a few hours earlier than usual.”
Nitro is in the Kanawha River Valley just west of Charleston, West Virginia’s largest city and state capital. The Kanawha Valley is known here as “Chemical Valley,” due to the high concentration of chemical plants and a history of deadly industrial incidents. “My co-worker has relatives who work in one of the chemical plants,” Ghale said. “He told me that there are leaks all the time and they just cover it up. This time it got out of hand and they couldn’t do that. It is a management problem.”
“They need a stricter policy on the handling of chemicals,” said another student, who asked not to be identified. “But the companies speed up production to make more money.”
The last fatal explosion in the Kanawha Valley was in December 2020, when a blast at another plant left one worker dead and three others injured. The last reported chemical release at Catalyst Refiners was a nitric acid spill in August 2013, which injured two workers. Since then, the plant has been cited for numerous violations.
“This disaster highlights once again the need for working people to use our unions to win control over conditions where we work,” said Tony Lane, SWP candidate for governor of Pennsylvania. “Government agencies, like the Environmental Protection Agency, block the efforts of workers to uncover the truth of what the bosses are doing. Millions saw this in the February 2023 Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, which led to a catastrophe for working people throughout the region. The fact is, these disasters are entirely preventable.”