By MONROE ROARK
Staff Writer

Six employees of a Peachtree City industrial facility were treated Friday afternoon at Fayette Community Hospital after an incident involving an unidentified chemical gas.

According to Steve Soehnel of Wilden Plastics, located in the city's industrial park, a “production situation” at about 11:30 a.m. Friday created a “gaseous chemical emission” that made three employees sick.

Wilden officials took them to the hospital to be checked out, and they were later released with no physical injuries, Soehnel said.

Three more employees came in to the hospital later with “symptoms of chemical exposure,” according to Peachtree City public information specialist Betsy Tyler. Peachtree City emergency services were not contacted in relation to the incident or the employees, city officials noted.

Instead, it was hospital officials who actually called 911, prompting a response from the county's joint hazardous materials team to check for possible contamination in the emergency room. The HazMat team also began checking the materials that were being used when the incident took place to try and determine what could have caused the gas. Authorities had still not determined the cause as of Monday afternoon, Tyler said.

Peachtree City emergency personnel came to the Wilden site Friday afternoon, as the smell from the incident lingered throughout the building, and recommended that it be closed while the appropriate air quality checks were conducted. All Wilden employees were sent home and the plant was shut down for the rest of the day.

Operations at Wilden resumed Saturday morning, with the exception of the production line connected to the incident, the Wilden spokesman said. The affected employees were back on the job Monday.

The chemical emission was contained at the plant, authorities said, and there was no off-site threat. Emergency personnel, Wilden representatives and LNP Engineering Plastics are continuing to work to identify the cause of the incident, Tyler said.

Soehnel, the controller at the Wilden plant who has been on the job for two weeks, said that he felt the situation was handled well by his company, but steps are being taken to better equip the plant and improve management's coordination with local authorities, he said. He added that he did not feel the situation necessitated Wilden calling 911.

Local emergency services personnel will be coming to Wilden next week to meet with management and help identify any measures that can improve safety and response to these kinds of situations, Soehnel said.

“We're a growing company, and we need to address some situations and be more involved with authorities,” he said, adding that he was not aware of the existence of Fayette's HazMat unit until Friday.

“We're developing a plan and a team to handle scenarios like this,” he said.

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