Gas leak may have caused Kallang Way factory incident
A woman wearing a Qualcomm lanyard is helped up an SCDF ambulance at 116 Kallang Way, following a chemical leak incident on July 18. A suspected gas leak inside the clean room of an electronics manufacturing company in Kallang Way on Tuesday resulted in 11 workers being sent to hospital, said the company yesterday. Photo: Jason Quah
SINGAPORE — A suspected gas leak inside the clean room of an electronics manufacturing company in Kallang Way on Tuesday (July 18) resulted in 11 workers being sent to hospital, said the company yesterday.
Giving its account of the incident, RF360 Singapore said that the factory’s life-safety system, which is a gas monitoring safety system inside the clean room on its third floor, was activated on Tuesday.
A clean room is an enclosed area where the environment is free from dust and other contaminants, and is used chiefly for the manufacture of electronic components.
The system’s activation indicated “a potential leak of a gas used in the production process of surface acoustic wave devices”, the company said.
“The life-safety system operated as designed and immediately triggered the gas shut-off and evacuation of the employees,” it added.
All employees working in the affected area were evacuated promptly.
“Clean room conditions were confirmed by the safety system to be at normal levels by the time the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) arrived,” the company said.
The SCDF, which was alerted to the incident at 166 Kallang Way at about 1.40pm on Tuesday, had said earlier that the “chemical leak” was shut off prior to the SCDF’s arrival by the in-built safety system on the factory’s premises. Its HazMat (hazardous materials) detectors had also showed “no reading of the chemical vapour in the production room”.
“The surrounding environment is also safe with no traces of the chemical in the air,” it had said in a post on the incident on its Facebook page.
The 11 workers who were affected by the leak were sent to hospital in a “conscious and stable condition”, said the SCDF. Most of them were said to have minor skin irritation.
Ten of them were discharged on Tuesday evening.
In response to TODAY’s queries on the affected workers’ condition, including the one who was hospitalised, a company spokesperson would only say that the case is under investigation.
“RF360 continues to monitor the safety of our employees and are cooperating with government and emergency agencies involved, and will reopen the third floor clean room once all required approvals are in place,” the company statement said.
Labour Member of Parliament Melvin Yong, in a Facebook post on Tuesday night, said that RF360 Singapore is a unionised company under the United Workers of Electronic and Electrical Industries.
Expressing relief that the admitted workers had suffered only minor skin irritation and were given the green light to be discharged, he said the union was in touch with the company to provide the necessary assistance to the affected workers.
“The union will also follow up closely with the company to investigate the chemical leak and work with the company to ensure that our workers’ safety at work is not compromised,” Mr Yong added.
