Pharma plant explosion in India kills 3 workers

For the second time in eight weeks, there have been deaths tied to an explosion at a pharmaceutical manufacturing facility, this time in India.

Three workers were killed instantly when the boiler they were working on at Pusilin Biotechnology Private exploded, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The plant is in Haryana, near New Delhi.

According to the Chinese Embassy in India, two of the engineers were Chinese and one was Indian, the news agency reported.

It was in April that 10 workers died of smoke inhalation caused by an explosion and fire at a Chinese drug manufacturing plant. The explosion at the Qilu Tianhe Huishi Pharmaceutical Co. facility in eastern Shandong province was caused by sparks as workers welded a pipe under the plant.

That explosion, in turn, followed one in March at a chemical plant in eastern Jiangsu province that killed 78 and injured hundreds. Those blasts again raised questions about the safety conditions at pharma plants in China.

In 2015, a massive fire and explosions in the Tianjin industrial port in China killed 160 people and left a massive area of destruction. GlaxoSmithKline had to stop production at a plant in the area following the blasts. No GSK workers were hurt by the nearby event, but the facility was damaged.

Jun 10, 2019

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