Chemical Accidents in China Have Killed Nearly 200 This Year, Report Finds

Nearly 200 people have died in accidents related to the production, storage and transportation of chemicals in China this year, according to a report by Greenpeace released on Wednesday.

The report suggested that regulation of China’s powerful chemical industry remained lax and inconsistent, a year after a deadly explosion in the port city of Tianjin prompted public outrage and calls for greater oversight.

“China’s chemicals industry is the largest in the world, but it is appallingly underregulated,” Cheng Qian, a Greenpeace activist who studies toxic chemicals, said in the report. “The government must take urgent action.”

The investigation by Greenpeace, which relied on government statistics, found that chemical accidents occurred with alarming frequency in China. From January to August, there were 232 — an average of nearly one a day — killing 199 people and injuring 400 others, the report said. The group did not examine how those figures compared with those from previous years.

Many of the accidents involved highly toxic substances, the report found, and more than half occurred while workers were transporting chemicals. Explosions were the cause of two of five deaths, according to the report.

Chemical accidents in China are often deadly because chemical plants arebuilt dangerously close to residential areas, schools or major roads, in violation of safety regulations.

The Greenpeace investigation found that nearly a fifth of major chemical companies have facilities near important natural resources, including rivers and lakes. Most chemical producers are in densely populated areas along China’s eastern coast, the report said.

On Wednesday, a chemical plant in Yantai, a city in the eastern province of Shandong, about 370 miles southeast of Tianjin, reported that four workers had been killed in an explosion. The plant, Wanhua Chemical, which produces chemicals used to make foams and paint, among other things, pledged to investigate the cause of the accident.

The explosion last year in Tianjin, one of the deadliest industrial accidents in China’s history, killed 165 people and injured nearly 800, causing $1.1 billion in damage to the city, a busy seaport. The government punished executives who ran the warehouse where the blast occurred for poor safety practices and local officials for lax oversight.

After the Tianjin accident, the Chinese government faced unusual public pressure to rein in the country’s booming chemical industry, a major source of economic growth in many provinces. Activists have urged the government to require chemical companies to disclose more information about their practices and to provide better safety training for workers.

Officials at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and the State Administration of Work Safety did not immediately respond to faxed requests for comment on Wednesday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/world/asia/chemical-accidents-china-greenpeace.html?_r=0