Eight peo­ple had to be hos­pi­talised fol­low­ing an am­mo­nia leak at the Co­conut Grow­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (CGA) in Laven­tille yes­ter­day.

The lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing com­pa­ny, along with a near­by school and busi­ness­es, were forced to close ear­ly, and there was al­so bumper-to-bumper traf­fic along the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route and Beetham High­way, af­ter fire of­fi­cers and po­lice shut down the im­me­di­ate ar­eas as they re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent.

The leak, along with traf­fic re­stric­tions as a re­sult of the pa­rade to mark Port-of-Spain’s 110th an­niver­sary, re­sult­ed in stand­still traf­fic head­ing in­to the cap­i­tal city.

When Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the CGA, of­fi­cials said at 9.30 am work­ers iden­ti­fied a chem­i­cal leak em­a­nat­ing from the com­pa­ny’s re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tem.

The work­ers alert­ed man­age­ment and an emer­gency alarm was set off, forc­ing em­ploy­ees to evac­u­ate to the near­est muster point.

How­ev­er, sev­er­al work­ers ex­posed to am­mo­nia com­plained of breath­ing prob­lems and were tak­en to the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

Five am­bu­lances were called in, along with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Fire Ser­vice, to deal with the leak.

Mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices im­me­di­ate­ly blocked off parts of the East­ern Main Road, Laven­tille, as well as the Old St Joseph Road.

Mo­torists on the EMR were rerout­ed to the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route un­til they ar­rived at Mor­vant Junc­tion.

The Suc­cess Laven­tille Sec­ondary School was al­so evac­u­at­ed and class­es were sus­pend­ed for the day.

Op­er­a­tions at CGA al­so came to an end.

Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer Daron Dasent said CGA’s re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tem and boil­er room were al­so shut down.

How­ev­er, at the time, the fire ser­vice had not yet de­ter­mined the cause of the leak and was un­able to say what led to it in the first place.

“Our in­spec­tors will come and vis­it to find out what is the cause, why it hap­pened, and what did you do or what mit­i­ga­tion do you have. We have not con­clud­ed ex­act­ly if it is the high-pres­sure side or the low-pres­sure side that caused the leak, if it’s due to neg­li­gence or ac­ci­dent,” the of­fi­cer said.

Up to late evening, sev­en of the af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees were dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal with one still be­ing treat­ed.

At the scene, some work­ers claimed it was the sec­ond time with­in the past year that there was a leak at the com­pa­ny.

How­ev­er, CGA’s Chief Hu­man Re­source Of­fi­cer de­nied this. Hansen Nar­i­nesingh said he was not aware of an­oth­er leak.

Nar­i­nesingh said, “This leak has been con­tained and we are present­ly do­ing all the nec­es­sary au­dits etc, to make sure that every­thing is in or­der for us. We don’t en­vis­age that there is any prob­lem mov­ing fur­ther. This is just a one-off some­thing that oc­curred. In nor­mal man­u­fac­tur­ing, there is a re­frig­er­a­tion sys­tem be­ing used, so we got a mi­nor leak.”

There were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 75 peo­ple on the com­pound at the time.

How­ev­er, Nar­i­nesingh did not be­lieve ex­po­sure to the chem­i­cal posed any ma­jor risk to the em­ploy­ees.

CGA is a lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­er of soaps, ed­i­ble oils, mar­garines and short­en­ings.

Em­ploy­ees said am­mo­nia is used in the pro­duc­tion of por­tions of mar­garine.

Ac­cord­ing to Med­ical News To­day, in­hala­tion of high lev­els of am­mo­nia can ir­ri­tate the throat and lungs as well as the mouth, skin, and eyes. In very high lev­els, am­mo­nia can dam­age the lungs and may be fa­tal.

When about the loss­es CGA suf­fered as a re­sult of the leak and clo­sure, Nar­i­nesingh said all shifts had to be called off for the day, but pro­duc­tion should re­sume next week.