Swedish specialty steelmaker SSAB has announced that it has again paused work at parts of the construction site for its new steel mill in Luleå after personal gas detectors registered low levels of hydrogen cyanide.
The company stated that the detected levels remained below applicable occupational exposure limits and are not considered to pose a risk to personnel, while no workers on site have become ill. However, SSAB said that work will not resume in the affected and adjacent groundwork areas until the situation has been fully investigated and confirmed to be safe.
SSAB chief technical officer and head of transformation office Carl Orrling said employee and contractor safety remains the company’s top priority, adding that SSAB will further expand its measurement program following the latest detector readings.
The new pause follows an earlier suspension on April 3, when several subcontractor workers reported illness-like symptoms at the site, as previously reported by SteelOrbis. Work gradually restarted from May 27 after a root cause analysis concluded that the symptoms were linked to dust combined with respiratory viruses and weather conditions, while extensive soil, soil gas and air measurements did not identify any gases connected to the reported symptoms.
