I thought it seemed awfully busy. This is much more understandable:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use English qw( -no_match_vars );
use Text::CSV;

$OUTPUT_FIELD_SEPARATOR  = "\n";
$OUTPUT_RECORD_SEPARATOR = "\n";

my $release_file = '../ecodata/releases.txt';

open my $release_fh, '<', $release_file
    or die "Can't open release file $release_file: $OS_ERROR\n";

my $csv = Text::CSV->new({
    auto_diag          => 1,
    binary             => 1,
    allow_loose_quotes => 1,
    escape_char        => '\\',
});

my %value;

# Header is 'TRI,Release#,ChemName,RegNum,Year,Pounds,Grams'
$csv->bind_columns(\@value{@{$csv->getline($release_fh)}});

while ($csv->getline($release_fh)) {
    {
        no warnings 'numeric';

        if ($value{'Pounds'} == 0.0 and $value{'Grams'} == 0.0) {
            warn "Release number $value{'Release#'} is weightless\n";
        }
    }

    print $value{'TRI'},
          $value{'Release#'},
          $value{'ChemName'},
          $value{'RegNum'},
          $value{'Year'},
          $value{'Pounds'},
          $value{'Grams'};
}

close $release_fh;

exit 0;
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Thank you, Tux.