The Daily Populous Thursday April 23rd, 2026 day edition
Authored by apnews.com and submitted by TheOKerGood

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INSTITUTE, W.Va. (AP) — A chemical leak at a West Virginia silver recovery business on Wednesday killed two people and sent about 30 others to hospitals, including one in serious condition, authorities said.

The leak occurred at the Catalyst Refiners plant in Institute as workers were preparing to shut down at least part of the facility, Kanawha County Commission Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman said.

A chemical gas reaction occurred at the plant involving nitric acid and another substance, Sigman said at a news briefing. He added that there was “a violent reaction of the chemicals and it instantaneously overreacted.”

“Starting or ending a chemical reaction are the most dangerous times,” Sigman said.

The chemical reaction that was believed to have occurred during a cleaning process produced toxic hydrogen sulfide, Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango said.

Among the injured were seven ambulance workers responding to the leak, officials said.

“We know that the first responders, they always run to the fire. They put themselves in harm’s way,” Gov. Patrick Morrisey said at an evening news conference. “We’re very grateful to these brave men and women and what they do. And they’re in our prayers, and we’re monitoring the recovery of those transported to our local hospitals.”

Other people were taken to the hospitals in private cars or even in one case a garbage truck, Sigman said.

Morrisey said one person was in serious condition.

Vandalia Health Charleston Area Medical Center, one of several hospitals in the area, was treating multiple patients, some brought by ambulance, while members of the community were arriving Wednesday afternoon asking to be checked, hospital spokesman Dale Witte said.

Witte said patients were experiencing respiratory symptoms including cough, shortness of breath, sore throat and itchy eyes. They were being evaluated in the emergency room.

WVU Medicine Thomas Memorial Hospital in South Charleston said in a statement it has cared for a dozen patients, including eight who arrived by personal vehicle and were not at the scene but were in the area at the time. It said those injuries were not considered life-threatening.

A shelter-in-place order was issued for the surrounding area and lifted more than five hours later. Officials said all the deaths occurred on the plant site.

“You had to get really close to the facility to smell it,” Sigman said.

The leak required a large-scale decontamination operation in which people had to remove their clothes and be sprayed down, authorities said.

Morrisey said it’s believed the local air quality and water supply were unaffected.

Catalyst Refiners works to remove silver from what remains of chemical processes. Ames Goldsmith Corp., the owner of Catalyst Refiners, said it is saddened by the deaths and its thoughts were with all those impacted and their families.

“This is an unfathomably difficult time,” company President Frank Barber said in a statement released at the briefing. “Our thoughts and prayers are with our colleagues and their families.”

Ames Goldsmith promised to work with local, state and federal officials as they investigate the leak. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation into what happened, a spokesperson said, adding that the agency has six months to complete its examination.

Silver is in a number of items ranging from circuit boards and other electronics, photographic and X-Ray films and jewelry. Nitric acid is used to dissolve materials, leaving behind silver nitrate that can be processed to recover pure silver. Recovery businesses can also crush or sandblast items with silver and use magnets or differences in density to sort out the precious metal.

Sigman said Ames Goldsmith recovers silver from the various plants at the Institute complex “and they’ll use it again. When they vacuum their carpets in their office, they recover so many thousands of dollars’ worth of silver out of it just vacuuming their carpets.”

The plant is located near Institute, a community about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Charleston, the state capital. The plant is in a region known as West Virginia’s “chemical valley,” although many plants that lined the area along the Kanawha River and produced hazardous materials have closed or changed ownership in the past several decades.

Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Kristin M. Hall in Nashville, Tennessee,.contributed to this report.

Pitiful-Young-9594 on April 22nd, 2026 at 23:22 UTC »

I live near by and in my senior year of high school Freedom Industries KNEW about a leak into the Elk River and put sandbags on top of it instead of reporting or trying to stop it. Well the freaking tap water started catching on fire and everyone got sick . I was out of high school due to the school not having running water for like 1-2 months.

Shaffer Equipment Company polluted local water ways with PBC and also didn’t bother cleaning up after themselves. The people in the town of Minden began dying of brain cancer, the amount of cancer within that town was unbelievable. They are now largely responsible for the clean up.

All these companies take resources from wv, take the money and tax benefits away to their home states instead of enriching the local communities, and then leave us with toxic waste and ruin. Extraction economics need to be made illegal - WV would be the richest state if all the profits from its resources and manufacturing was kept within the state.

byedrive202 on April 22nd, 2026 at 19:01 UTC »

There was pressure to defund and eliminate the Chemical Safety Board (CSB). Thankfully, its funding was preserved into 2026.

The chemical safety board likely will investigate this report and figure out what happened here. Nitric acid is no joke, it's not just a strong acid, but it's also a potent oxidizer, which means it really doesn't play nicely with other chemicals, especially those that have the capacity for oxidation such as ammonia, hydrocarbons, etc. Such combinations often lead to extremely hot and violent reactions, often with concomitant release of pressurized gases. When nitric acid is combined with incompatible substances in a closed container, it can lead to explosions.

Congress Preserves Chemical Safety Board Funding for FY 2026 | National Society of Professional Engineers

USCSB - YouTube

Lorenzoak on April 22nd, 2026 at 18:56 UTC »

Let me guess: the company will get slapped with a devastating $14,500 OSHA fine and a sternly worded letter, while the CEO gets his annual bonus