SAN ANTONIO - Federal safety inspectors "sandbagged" Union Carbide Corp. when they issued 221 citations against the company's plant in Institute, W.Va., the company's board chairman said.

"If the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) report on Institute is an opening salvo for a basic attack on our industry, the message is - when the attack comes, forget about fairness," Warren Anderson said Tuesday.

Anderson, speaking at the International Petrochemical Conference, said Union Carbide officials tried to "hold hands" with OSHA inspectors and "go through this thing together."

"These people spent five months in our plant, then they sandbagged us," he said.

OSHA last week cited Union Carbide for 221 safety violations, including 130 allegedly "willful" violations. Fines from the citations total an agency record $1.37 million.

OSHA inspectors converged on the Institute plant last September, a month after a poison gas leak sent six workers and 129 residents to Kanawha Valley hospitals.

Last week, Labor Secretary William Brock and OSHA officials held joint news conferences in Washington, D.C., and Charleston, W.Va., to announce the fines.

Never in history has a Labor secretary announced such violations on television, Anderson said.

"Why he chose to do that, I don't know," Anderson said.

"God knows, Union Carbide is not perfect, but we are more than concerned about safety. We know people are frightened and we are responding," he said. "If government agencies take up the role of chief antagonist it could hurt what we are trying to achieve."

Anderson described as a "terrible catastrophe" the Dec. 3 , 1984, methyl isocyanate gas leak at its Bhopal , India, plant. The leak killed more than 2,000 people and injured more than 200,000.

Since that accident, the Institute plant has come under intense scrutiny because it, too, makes MIC.

Union Carbide officials shut down the MIC unit at Institute after the Bhopal leak and installed $5 million in safety equipment. It did not reopen until May 1985, after federal inspectors labeled it safe.

Three months after the MIC unit reopened, a poisonous mixture of aldicarb oxime and methylene chloride escaped from a storage tank. Union Carbide was fined $30,000, but the fines were cut to $4,400 after the company agreed to install additional safety equipment.