CSB Opens Investigation After Hydrogen Sulfide Release Kills Two at Kanawha Valley Silver Refinery Weeks Before Scheduled Closure

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board announced Thursday it has opened an investigation into the fatal chemical release that occurred a day earlier at Catalyst Refiners, Inc., a silver and ethylene-oxide catalyst refinery in Institute, West Virginia. Two workers were killed and a third critically injured when a reaction between nitric acid and another substance during tank cleaning produced toxic hydrogen sulfide, according to the CSB's public release.

"We are opening an investigation into this tragic incident to determine how it happened and identify ways to help prevent something like this from happening again," CSB Chairperson Steve Owens said. Board Member Sylvia Johnson added: "This incident has had a real impact on workers, and on the surrounding community. Understanding what went wrong is essential so that facilities handling hazardous chemicals can operate more safely and responsibly."

The incident began around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday inside a pump area where crews were cleaning a tank ahead of the plant's planned June 2026 shutdown. Nitric acid—a strong corrosive oxidizer—mixed with a second substance described by local emergency officials as "M2000A," producing a violent reaction that off-gassed hydrogen sulfide into a single building. Hydrogen sulfide, lethal at high concentrations, blocks oxygen uptake in the lungs and has no antidote; treatment is limited to symptom management.

Kanawha County Commission President Ben Salango confirmed two fatalities and one critical injury at a Wednesday afternoon news conference. County Emergency Manager C.W. Sigman described the material as "an acid-based material, most of it was inside the building, but there are some patients medics are working on right now." West Virginia University critical-care pulmonologist Dr. Tom Takubo, briefing reporters, said hydrogen sulfide "is a known pulmonary irritant in that it can get into the lungs, coat the lungs, and prevent oxygen from getting into the bloodstream."

Twenty-one people were decontaminated and evaluated, according to county officials; seven of them were Kanawha County ambulance-crew members who responded to the scene. WVU Thomas Memorial Hospital and CAMC Vandalia set up decontamination lines to receive patients. A one-mile shelter-in-place radius was issued and held until 12:19 p.m. Wednesday for the Nitro–St. Albans corridor; Governor Patrick Morrisey's evening news conference confirmed all shelter-in-place orders and road closures had been lifted.

The company's response

Ames Goldsmith Corporation, the South Glens Falls, New York–based precious-metals parent of Catalyst Refiners, confirmed the deaths in a statement from its president, Frank Barber: "Ames Goldsmith Corp. is deeply saddened by the deaths of two of our colleagues as a result of an industrial accident at our Catalyst Refiners plant in Nitro, West Virginia, this morning." The company said a third colleague was hospitalized, the incident produced chemical fumes within a single building, and it is cooperating with local, state, and federal agencies. The names of the deceased have not been released.

The Catalyst Refiners facility opened in 1999 and processes spent catalyst material from ethylene oxide manufacturing. Ames Goldsmith had announced the plant would close in June 2026; decommissioning work was already under way at the time of the release.

A repeating pattern in the Kanawha Valley

The Institute release is the latest fatal chemical event in a corridor of West Virginia whose industrial history has produced repeated multi-casualty incidents. A 2008 explosion at the Bayer CropSciences plant on the same Institute site killed two workers and narrowly avoided releasing methyl isocyanate—the chemical responsible for the 1984 Bhopal disaster. A 2009 release at the DuPont plant in nearby Belle killed a worker. In 2014, the Freedom Industries spill contaminated the drinking-water supply of roughly 300,000 Kanawha Valley residents.

Catalyst Refiners has its own incident record. In 2013, a tank leak at the plant released about 50 gallons of nitric acid and injured two workers, according to reporting by Mountain State Spotlight. In 2018, OSHA cited the facility for failing to routinely evaluate employees operating industrial vehicles; no fine was assessed. Ames Goldsmith's parent operations have faced additional citations at U.S. facilities since 2018, including a 2022 New York incident in which unlabeled pipelines exposed roughly 70 workers to nitric acid.

A 2014 proposal from chemical-industry leaders called for stronger safety oversight in the Kanawha Valley following the Freedom Industries spill; industry opposition, citing economic cost, blocked implementation. Mountain State Spotlight reports that recent EPA accident-prevention rules face proposed weakening under the current administration.

What happens next

By Thursday afternoon, the U.S. EPA had deployed eleven air monitors on the Catalyst Refiners property; the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection reported hydrogen sulfide readings at "non-detect" with "no ongoing threat." DEP spokesman Terry Fletcher and site contractor Brad Wright said ventilation of the affected building was under way to allow entry for cleanup and cause assessment.

Three investigations will now run in parallel. The CSB, an independent federal agency, will examine the chemical reaction and the circumstances leading to the release, and may issue safety recommendations to industry and regulators. OSHA has opened its own inquiry and has six months to complete it. The West Virginia DEP is conducting air and environmental sampling alongside EPA.

The facility was weeks from shutdown. Its two fatalities occurred during the cleanup.