Irish Times - 12-08-05
Pharmachem factory in Cork made pipeline error
Barry Roche, Southern Correspondent

An error in pipework at a Cork pharmaceutical firm led to waste material intended for incineration ending up at a waste water treatment plant, an EPA report has established.

The fault was spotted by staff but was assumed to have been an earlier error which had been corrected.

According to the EPA report, an initial error in the pipework at GlaxoSmithKline's nanomilling facility at its plant at Currabinny, Carrigaline, was spotted in the drawings and was corrected by contract staff installing the system.

However, when a subsequent labelling error in pipework was spotted by supervisory staff on March 24th, 2003, they wrongly assumed that it was the original error which had been corrected and instead approved the work allowing the system to become operational.

The error in assigning and labelling the pipeline resulted in waste material made up of 99 per cent water and less than 1 per cent organic residues being sent to the company's waste water treatment plant instead of going to incineration, said a GlaxoSmithKline spokesperson.

According to the GSK spokesperson, the error in the pipeline which came into commission on July 15th, 2004, was detected during routine maintenance on April 15th, 2005, and the pipeline was immediately disconnected and the matter reported to the EPA.

The waste water treatment plant discharges through a number of stages into Cork harbour after organic residues sink and have been removed for incineration, and at no stage was untreated waste discharged into the environment, the GSK spokesperson added.

Asked by The Irish Times if its inspectors had approved the facility for operation, an EPA spokesman said the EPA had approved the original design but the actual "process commissioning is the responsibility of the company".

"The EPA's role lies in monitoring emissions from that process which was carried out," said a spokesman, adding that the EPA had carried out a total of 12 inspections at the GSK facility in the period 2004 and 2005.

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