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"Samsung has officially apologized for a company pipeline that melted and\u00A0leaked a significant amount of hydrofluoric acid gas\u00A0at one of its semiconductor plants in South Korea, killing one worker and leaving another four injured.\r\n\r\nReported by Engadget (via Yonhap News), Samsung Electronics\u00A0Vice Chairman Kwon Oh-hyun\u00A0said that the company would now be revoking its application to have its semiconductor plants in Hwaseong - which includes the building where the incident occurred - certified as \u201Cgreen\u201D for an additional five years.\r\n\r\nKwon was also cited as saying that the company would take additional steps to ensure that an incident of this nature never happened again.\u00A0&amp;quot;We plan to overhaul the system in a bid to better make environmentally friendly workplaces,&amp;quot; he added.\r\n\r\nThe report by Yonhap News later says that a total of seven people - including three officials of Samsung Electronics - are being investigated on the grounds that their negligence caused the original gas leak.\r\n\r\nDetails of the incident, which occurred in January, have been reported differently by both Samsung and the press.\r\n\r\nTo begin with, Samsung issued the following statement shortly after the incident: \u201DA small amount of diluted hydrofluoric acid leaked early Monday morning during maintenance at one of the gas and chemical supply systems at the Hwaseong site.\u201D\r\n\r\nThe next day, Jeon Dong Su, a co-president of Samsung Electronics, apologized to all of the families affected and revealed that an investigation, managed by a third-party, would be setup to work out what had happened.\r\n\r\nYonhap News\u00A0reported in February, however, that up to 10 liters of hydrofluoric acid had leaked from pipes outside of the affected facility. That seems to conflict with Samsung\u2019s original comments, and was all but confirmed in the following police report:\u00A0\u201CHydrofluoric acid has been leaked outside of the chip plant after an analysis of CCTV footage taken inside the Central Chemical Supply System (CCSS) of the chip plant.\u201D\r\n\r\nLocal environmental groups then said that the leak was causing an increase in the concentration of acid across a two kilometer radius around the plant.\r\n\r\nSamsung has taken responsibility for the incident, but it remains to be seen exactly how the company will ensure this doesn\u2019t happen again. The results of the independent investigation, once published, should also shed some light as to how this was ever allowed to happen."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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