2016-09-26
China‘s northern port city of Tianjin, after two massive explosions ripped through a hazardous chemicals warehouse, killing more than 170 people, Aug. 12, 2015.
AFP
Chemical accidents in China have killed nearly 200 people so far this years, according to a report from the environmental group Greenpeace highlighting lax management across the world’s largest chemicals industry.
The group’s “Chemical Accident Counter” run by its East Asia branch counted 232 chemical accidents between January and August this year, resulting in at least 199 deaths and 400 injuries, although Greenpeace said the list isn’t exhaustive.
It said many chemicals facilities were worryingly close to areas of high population density and to ecologically sensitive areas.
“China’s chemicals industry is the largest in the world, but it is appallingly under-regulated,” Greenpeace East Asia toxics experts Cheng Qian said in a statement on the group’s website.
“Tragic accidents occur on an almost daily basis. The government must take urgent action to manage chemicals in a sound manner, provide a safety net for workers and citizens, and protect ecologically important areas across the country,” Chen said.
Some 43 percent of accidents were the result of leaks, while 27 percent were triggered by fire and 16 percent by explosions.
Just over half of accidents occur when chemicals are being transported, with 27 percent happening during production, the report said.
The groups said the majority of China’s 33,625 chemical facilities are concentrated on the densely populated eastern seaboard, with more than 80 percent falling outside the remit of a nationwide industrial safety initiative.
But the group said its data are also in urgent need of updating, and called for greater transparency around the industry.
“Chemicals management policy must be thoroughly reformed and recognize the intrinsic hazards of0 chemicals to ensure not only production safety, but also health and environmental safety,” the group said.
Government interference
It said chemicals facilities should be moved away from urban and environmentally sensitive areas, and that hazardous chemicals should gradually be replaced with safer alternatives.
Jiangsu-based environmental activist Wu Lihong said one of the biggest problems in China is government interference in the country’s industrial and environmental policy.
“My first suggestion would be for the government to start acting [on its existing legislation] rather than turning a blind eye to lawbreaking,” Wu said.
“My second would be that experts and scientists start publishing true and accurate figures,” he said.
Wu said the media, who have recently been warned by President Xi Jinping that they must put out the approved message of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, should also play a role in pollution prevention.
“The media has to tell the truth, because if they don’t, it is just encouraging officials and polluting enterprises to lie and fake their way through,” Wu said. “This is unacceptable.”
But he also called for more public participation in environmental issues.
“The government cracks down very hard on those courageous people who blow the whistle on pollution in their local areas,” Wu said.
“Pollution is such a huge news story in China, and yet we’re not allowed to talk about it.”
Breakneck growth
He Ping, who chairs the Washington-based International Fund for China’s Environment, said environmental protections haven’t kept pace with the breakneck growth in China’s chemicals industry in the past two decades.
“There is a regulatory system in place, but not enough is done to implement it.”
He said environmental protection bureaux across China lack any real political power to override the will of local governments.
“The environmental protection bureaux need to work together with the media and the general public,” He said.
On Aug. 12, 2015, two massive explosions ripped through a hazardous chemicals warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin, killing more than 170 people and destroying residential buildings near the epicenter.
The first of the two explosions measured 2.3 on the Richter scale for seismic activity, while the second that followed 30 seconds later was 28 times as powerful, equivalent to 450 metric tons of TNT, state media reported.
In the immediate aftermath, pollution fears grew as the government confirmed that 40 different toxic chemicals were in the vicinity, including 700 metric tons of sodium cyanide.
Almost a year later, at least 21 people were killed and five others injured, three seriously, after a steam pipe exploded at the Madian Ganshi Power Generation Co. in Hubei’s Dangyang city.
