Fumes in a residential lane: Salem dyeing unit's acid leak leaves more than 50 gasping

On Tuesday night, a quiet residential street in Salem became a gas chamber. A leak in the dyeing room of a textile-yarn dyeing unit in the Gugai area sent hydrochloric acid fumes rolling out of the unit and into the homes around it, leaving more than 50 people, workers and residents alike, with burning eyes and a struggle to breathe.

The unit, on Muniyappan Kovil Street in Ward 47 of the Salem Corporation, was mixing hydrochloric acid for the dyeing process when the leak occurred. More than ten workers were engaged in dyeing work inside. As the fumes thickened, workers fled the dyeing room gasping, and residents poured out of their houses. A team from the Shevapet Fire and Rescue Services rushed in, sprayed water inside the dyeing room and brought the leak under control in under thirty minutes.

The questions that follow are not about those thirty minutes. They are about the years before them. The Shevapet police, who held an inquiry at the spot, are now checking whether the unit held the required permissions from the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and how the acid escaped. Residents say this was not the first time: they allege that earlier chemical leaks from the same unit had caused discomfort in the locality, and that the neighbourhood had lived with that unease without an answer.

A dyeing unit handling industrial acid in the middle of a residential ward is not an accident of geography. It is a decision, renewed every year that its licences are renewed and every inspection that does not happen. Who cleared a red-category chemical process for a lane where children sleep on the other side of the wall? When were the acid storage and mixing arrangements last inspected, and by whom? The police inquiry into permissions is the right first step, but it is only a first step.

Officials have not yet said how many of the affected needed hospital treatment, and no action against the unit, owned by Mr Badrinathan, had been announced at the time of reporting. The Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board and the district administration owe the people of Muniyappan Kovil Street three things quickly: the unit's permission and inspection record in public, medical support for everyone who breathed those fumes, and a clear answer on whether a dyeing unit belongs in that street at all. Fifty people gasping in their own homes is not an industrial incident. It is a failure of the state to stand between a chemical and a cradle.