CHENNAI: Even as the death toll in the ammonia leak at St Peter & Paul Sea Foods Exports Private Limited in Tiruvallur district rose to nine on Tuesday, doctors treating the dozens of the private facility’s other workers express concern that the patients may face long-term impact due to the high level of exposure to the gas.
Of the 80-odd people who were hospitalised following the leakage at the seafood processing unit on June 21, several suffered cardiac arrest, altered sensorium, coma, and bleeding from the nose, indicating that they had inhaled high levels of ammonia, said doctors.
A senior doctor attending to the victims recalled that they saw 14 cases during the ammonia leak at a fertilizer unit in Ennore in 2023. They only had suffered skin irritation, giddiness and vomiting due to mild inhalation of the gas.
A doctor at the Government Stanley Medical College Hospital treating the workers said above 250 ppm of ammonia only can cause organ damage. The patients had respiratory tract oedema and so had to be intubated, the doctor said.
When someone is exposed to hazardous gas, the first thing one should do is to move the affected people away from the reported leakage site. The level of damage to the lungs and other organs depends on the severity and duration of the gas they inhaled, doctors said.
Dr K Kolandasamy, former director of public health and preventive medicine, said ammonia is an irritant gas. It will hence affect the mucous membrane in the respiratory tract and cause pulmonary oedema.
A treating doctor at the Government Stanley Hospital said treatment was given depending on which of the patient’s organs were affected.
The affected are administered antibiotics, steroids and fluids depending on their condition, doctors said.
Dr R Muthuselvan, Professor of Medicine, Madha Medical College Hospitals, said the exchange of gas in the victims is affected. So, when the oxygen supply is affected, lungs and other organs also might get affected. The scars developed in the lungs due to this will stay depending on the healing process of the body. The effect can be more and prolonged in people already with asthma, Muthuselvan added.
