An estimated 1,000 pounds of ethylene was released Friday at Dow's Freeport, Texas, site, the company said in a filing with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
The release occurred when workers were performing maintenance on the plant's Polyethylene 4 unit, the company told TCEQ. The incident lasted one minute.
Dow said in the TCEQ filing that the maintenance was necessary to purge the reactor prior to restarting. It was unclear if the reactor had been restarted Monday or if any production had been lost as a result of the maintenance.
Dow officials could not be reached for immediate comment on Monday.
The Freeport facility has a total polyethylene capacity of 1.4 billion pounds, producing 445 million lbs/year of low density polyethylene, 562 million lbs/year of linear low density polyethylene and 410 million lbs/year of high density polyethylene.