BP PLC said Friday about 90 contract workers at its Texas City refinery were sent to hospitals overnight for medical observation after reporting they were feeling ill. BP spokesman Scott Dean said Friday morning the latest information he had was that all the workers, whose complaints included eye irritation and nausea, had been released from local hospitals, The Associated Press reported. The refinery, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southeast of Houston, was the site of a 2005 explosion that killed 15 people and injured 170 _ the worst U.S. industrial accident since 1990. Dean said the workers who fell ill were part of a group of about 400 working on a crude distillation unit that has been shut down since Hurricane Rita hit the Gulf Coast in 2005. He said monitoring personnel checked the air for sources that could have caused the workers to become sick and detected nothing. «There was no evidence of a release or leak of any kind,» he said. The refinery, which can have as many as 6,000 workers on site daily, was operating normally Friday, the company said.
