Toxic Fumes Send 50 People to Hospitals

More than 50 people were treated at area hospitals Tuesday after workers in a sealant manufacturing plant in the City of Industry overheated a drum of raw plastic, filling the neighborhood with noxious fumes.

Most of those injured suffered from nausea, shortness of breath or chest pains and were treated with oxygen. Two were admitted for observation and the rest were released.

According to Los Angeles County Fire Department Battalion Chief Robert Curtis, workers at General Sealants Inc., 300 S. Turnbull Canyon Road., were heating a 55-gallon drum of epoxy resin, used in the manufacture of a sealant, when the material became dangerously overheated. “It started a reaction that they couldn’t stop,” Curtis said. More than 600 people from 23 businesses were evacuated.

Curtis said that the General Sealants workers had heated the material “to make it flow better for production purposes.”

The Fire Department was called to the scene shortly after 9:30 a.m. Members of two hazardous materials units vented the drum and cooled it with fire hoses, Curtis said. It took three hours to end the chemical reaction, which emitted foul-smelling white smoke, Curtis said.

Shortly after 10 a.m., sheriff’s deputies evacuated adjacent businesses, most of them manufacturing plants. Workers for Mectron Industries, next door to the sealant company, said they had tried to keep the odor out by closing their doors.

“It was so bad in there,” said Doreen Garcia, who was treated at Queen of the Valley Hospital in West Covina for nausea and chest pains. “This smell just started coming into the department. By the time they told us to evacuate, I was being sick in the bathroom.”

By early afternoon, the West Covina hospital had treated 27 victims of the fumes. None of the patients had been admitted to the hospital, said Cathleen Rodman, director of community relations.

She said that patients with chest pains had been treated with intravenous fluids and drugs for possible irregularity in their heartbeats.

Other patients were sent to Whittier Community, Terrace Plaza, Presbyterian Intercommunity and Intercommunity hospitals.

A Fire Department spokesman said that fumes did not produce a life-threatening situation. “The fumes were of a low toxic level,” he said. A spokesman for the South Coast Air Quality Management District said inspectors were investigating to determine if air pollution regulations had been violated by the company.

Most of the affected companies had reopened by mid-afternoon. There was no one available for comment from General Sealants, which remained closed after the incident.