Coupang Denies Claims of "Chloroform Detection" as Distorted

A Coupang logistics center. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Moon Hyewon] Coupang strongly denied the claim that "chloroform was detected at three times the standard level" in relation to the death of a cook at the Cheonan logistics center cafeteria, calling it groundless.

On the 20th, Coupang stated through its newsroom, "Despite the explanation from the Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, malicious claims that distort the results and do not correspond to the facts are being made,” it said.

Earlier, a media outlet reported that “when three cleaning liquids present at the site were diluted and mixed, chloroform, a toxic substance exceeding three times the domestic permissible limit, was detected, and there is a possibility that the deceased working in the cafeteria died due to this. The deceased was affiliated with Dongwon Home Food, a subsidiary of Dongwon Group, and collapsed and died while cleaning in the kitchen of Coupang’s Cheonan logistics center on the 1st.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute later clarified in a statement that “it is true that 29.911 micrograms of chloroform were detected per sample when three cleaning agents were mixed and diluted for analysis, but this was not an analysis of air collected from the site. Instead, the sample solution was heated (50℃) inside a 10ml test container and analyzed, creating results under laboratory conditions,” and “this cannot be compared to the one-day exposure standard (domestic permissible limit: 10ppm), which is the standard for comparing air collected from the workplace.”

A Coupang official said, “Despite the explanation from the Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute, some parties are making malicious claims that distort the results and do not correspond to the facts.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.