34 Workers Sick at Sweden's Green Steel Site - Nobody Can Explain Why
Nosebleeds, dizziness and chemical pneumonitis hit 34 workers building SSAB's 52-billion-kronor fossil-free steel plant. Accident investigators say the company's explanation doesn't hold up - but they won't open an inquiry.
LULEĂ… - Nosebleeds, dizziness, headaches and one serious case of chemical pneumonitis. Early this year, 34 workers fell ill on the construction site of steel giant SSAB's new electric steel plant in LuleĂĄ, northern Sweden - the flagship of the company's multi-billion "fossil-free steel" push. Now Sweden's accident investigation authority says nobody can explain why.
The Swedish Accident Investigation Authority (SHK) had an outside expert, the IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, go through the material SSAB produced on the outbreak. The verdict: the company's own investigations are not enough to establish what made the workers sick, as public broadcaster SVT first reported.
Sickness began when the digging started
The illnesses clearly coincided with the start of large-scale excavation on the site. According to Dagens Nyheter, the ground the plant is being built on consists of dredged material and residues from decades of earlier steelmaking.
In late May, SSAB presented its explanation: fine construction dust was the main culprit, made worse by cold winter weather and a wave of respiratory viruses.
The review takes that story apart. Support for weather, wind direction and viruses as explanations is described as weak. Gases from nearby industry can largely be ruled out as the sole cause - but gases released when the old industrial ground was dug up cannot be excluded.
Dust may well have contributed, IVL says, but it cannot be proven as the main cause because there are no measurements of how much the workers were actually exposed to.
Wrong weather, wrong dates
The review also found plain errors in the company's material. SSAB claimed the winter had been unusually windy. In fact it was the second least windy period in ten years, DN reports.
For almost one in four of those affected, the dates did not match the company's own records either. IVL warns of a "false sense of security", while finding no grounds to say SSAB should have foreseen the risks.
No investigation despite open questions
Even so, the accident investigators will not open a formal inquiry. The authority says the measures already taken mean a full investigation would not bring significant safety gains. The Swedish Work Environment Authority and the county administrative board are instead to coordinate oversight - and SHK stresses its decision should not be read as an acquittal.
"They have carried out relevant investigations, but the basis for the root-cause analysis is not sufficient," SHK investigation chair Kristina Börjevik Kovaniemi told the local paper Norrbottens-Kuriren.
Several of the sick workers have been on long-term sick leave. Police are running a separate investigation covering 46 people - more than the 34 cases the accident investigators looked at.
"People's health and safety is our highest priority," SSAB communications chief Martin Gidlund said.
The LuleĂĄ plant is a roughly 52-billion-kronor project (about $4.9 billion) meant to replace SSAB's blast furnaces as part of Sweden's green steel ambitions - the same wave of state-cheered megaprojects that gave the country the Northvolt collapse and the cash-hungry Stegra plant in Boden.
Mats Dagerlind · Senior Political Columnist
Mats Dagerlind is Senior Political Columnist at Samnytt and Samnytt News. A veteran Swedish political commentator and essayist, he covers Swedish domestic politics, free speech, cultural identity, and media accountability.
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