Three contract workers died after suspected toxic gas exposure inside a wastewater tank at Tata Electronics' Hosur iPhone parts plant in Tamil Nadu. Apple, Tata and the state are investigating.
Three contract workers died after inhaling suspected toxic gas while working on a wastewater tank at the Tata Electronics plant near Hosur in Tamil Nadu's Krishnagiri district on Monday evening. The factory makes components for Apple iPhones. Police and the district administration are investigating, and Apple, Tata and state authorities have said they will examine the deaths.
Police said the incident took place around 5.10 pm, when the workers were cleaning a wastewater storage tank known as the nano filter tank, a job done once every two months on a rotational basis. According to Krishnagiri Collector C. Dinesh Kumar, B. Akmal, 28, looked inside the tank and fainted. P. Kaveri, 32, then asked M. Sarathikumar, 25, to check on Akmal, and Sarathikumar also collapsed. Kaveri went in next and fell as well. A fourth member of the team raised the alarm. All three were taken to a private hospital in Hosur, where they were declared brought dead. They were from Dharmapuri district. The exact gas involved has not been established, and the bodies were sent to Government Krishnagiri Medical College Hospital for post-mortem, with the report awaited. The collector said there were no proper safety measures in place while handling the effluent treatment plant.
Reuters reported that the workers were engaged by a sub-contractor of Nalco Water, part of US-based Ecolab, which operates the effluent treatment plant at the Tata facility. Nalco Water said it was working with local authorities and that it takes the incident extremely seriously. One source told Reuters that an Apple team was visiting the plant to assist the inquiry. Tata Electronics and Apple did not respond to requests for comment. Tamil Nadu Industries Minister Virudhai Magal Keerthana has promised a thorough investigation, and officials from the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health visited the site. Two industry sources said production was not affected because the plant was closed for Deepavali.
Roughly a quarter of the world's iPhones now come from India, and Tata's electronics unit accounts for about 40 percent of iPhone assembly in the country, with Foxconn making the rest. The Hosur site has faced other problems. In September 2024, a fire at a chemical plant inside the facility left 11 people hospitalised with suffocation and other complications. Reuters also noted a ransomware attack that leaked documents linked to an unreleased iPhone model and concerns about water pollution in recent months. Safety experts note that gases can build up in poorly ventilated tanks and that rescuers entering to help a collapsed worker can be exposed too, and international guidance says a tank is not safe simply because it has been emptied.
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