Yunnan Pioneer Chemical Company releases investigation report on the accident that resulted in 3 deaths by suffocation: 1 person suffocated and fell, and 2 people blindly attempted to rescue them.

On December 12, 2024, during the maintenance of the first reactor of the 120,000 tons/year wide fraction coal tar hydrogenation unit in the refined recycling workshop of Yunnan Pioneer Chemical Co., Ltd., a nitrogen asphyxiation accident occurred, resulting in the deaths of 3 people. On March 14, 2026, Kunming Emergency Management Bureau published the investigation report of the accident mentioned above, the investigation team determined that this was a major production safety accident caused by employees violating safety management regulations. The direct cause of the accident was that the operators violated the rules by repairing the defects of the reactor without obtaining a confined space work permit and without wearing protective equipment. One person accidentally inhaled a high concentration of nitrogen and suffocated and fell, while the other two people blindly attempted to rescue without wearing appropriate personal protective equipment, all of them fainted inside the reactor due to oxygen deficiency caused by inhaling high-concentration nitrogen, leading to the expansion of the accident.