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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