Over 100 take ill after gas leak at Durgapur Steel Plant

Over 100 people have taken ill after a methane gas leak in Durgapur Steel Plant at Bardhaman district of West Bengal today.

According to reports, the gas leaked from one of the blast furnaces of the Steel Authority of India run industrial plant around 1 pm. The matter was reported when some workers complained of dizziness and uneasiness on inhaling the leaking poisonous gas.

According to some media reports it was a mix of methane and other harmful gases like carbon monoxide that leaked at the plant and affected many workers.

Of those hospitalised at the plant's Main Hospital, four who are in a critical condition have been shifted to the intensive care unit.
The plant's top management is trying to ascertain the cause of the gas leak.

The incident at the plant comes just a day following a similar incident in Mumbai which left seventy people ill, some of them critically, from exposure to chlorine fumes leaking from a cylinder in a container yard in Mumbai's Sewri area inside the Mumbai Port Trust.