Tuesday's deadly chlorine leak in east China's Jiangsu Province has caused a wave of concern over the management of hazardous chemicals.

The accident, which has killed 28 people, occurred at 6:50am on Tuesday when an overloaded tank truck carrying 35 tons of liquefied chlorine blew out a tire and rammed into a cargo truck on the Huaian section of the Beijing-Shanghai expressway.

The leakage has done great damage to the surrounding farmland covering an area of 1,375 hectares, killing many crops, including wheat and vegetables.

According to the Beijing-based China Youth Daily, the number of accidents involving hazardous chemicals has been on a noticeable rise in recent years.

In 2000, 514 such accidents occurred, killing 785, while the number climbed to 621 in 2003, claiming 960 lives. Last April alone, 13 serious chemical leaks and explosions took place in Northeast China's Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces and Beijing. A total of 23 people died in the accidents, with more than 300 hurt or poisoned. As many as 150,000 people were evacuated.

Wei Lijun, an expert on the management of hazardous chemicals with the China Academy of Safety Sciences and Technology, told China Daily there were about 20,000 manufacturers of hazardous chemicals in China. Hazardous chemicals include alcohol, benzene, gasoline and chlorine.

And there are many additional companies doing other businesses related to hazardous chemicals. Wei estimated that the number of such companies in the country could stand at several hundred thousand.

"In recent years, the number of companies dealing with hazardous chemicals is increasing because doing such business is extremely profitable," Wei said.

According to Wei, China should improve its law and regulatory system as well as technical standards on the production and management of hazardous chemicals, which are currently not sound enough.

An emergency response system, research and studies, training of government officials and staff as well as industry workers, and the monitoring of major sources of hazardous chemicals should be strengthened at the same time, he added.

Poor management system

Currently, the management of hazardous chemicals done by companies doing business related to hazardous chemicals is far from adequate, Wei said. Some even have outdated equipment and do not do sound maintenance of existing hardware.

And workers in the industry are not well trained, he said.

For example, if a driver of the tank truck carrying liquefied chlorine in Huaian knew how to deal with chlorine leaks, there would not have been so many casualties.

Meanwhile, the supervision and management of such chemicals at city and county levels are poor. Wei said most cities and counties do not have a specialized organization ortask force dealing with hazardous chemicals. In addition, Wei said research in hazardous chemicals in China is weak and fails to offer enough support to the safe production and management of such chemicals.

Chen Xu, with the hazardous chemicals department under the State Administration of Work Safety, told China Youth Daily one of the reasons for frequent accidents is linked to the fact that the development of the chemical industry is unbalanced among different regions.

Some regions use vehicles that are worth only 100,000 yuan (US$12,000) to transport hazardous chemicals, while others maintain expensive ones costing as much as 1 million yuan (US$120,000).

Chen was quoted as saying that government bodies need to strengthen their coordination in order to ensure the safe production of hazardous chemicals.

According to Chen, the regulation on safety management of hazardous chemicals stipulates that 10 government bodies are responsible for safety management and supervision. The bodies include the ministries of communications and public security as well as Chen's administration.

And the rules on production safety made by the government bodies are not totally in accord with one another, he said.

In addition, Chen admitted that regulations on safety management of hazardous chemicals have defects. For example, the regulation rules that uses of hazardous chemicals must be licensed, but it does not make clear which department issues the licences.

(China Daily April 2, 2005)