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By their nature, chemical manufacturing, storage, and transportation are accidents waiting to happen. Chemicals can be corrosive, toxic and can react explosively. The impacts of chemical accidents can be deadly, both for humans and for the environment. The reasons behind such disasters range from human error to the use of outdated equipment and careless handling of dangerous chemicals.
One of the deadliest chemical accidents took place in 1984 at a pesticide plant in the central Indian state of Medhya Pradesh. At midnight on December 2-3, a combination of factors ranging from the hazardous handling of hazardous chemicals to the use of outdated and malfunctioning industrial equipment led to the exposure of more than 500,000 people to gases and by-products. toxic, resulting in nearly 3,800 officially confirmed cases. human deaths
In September 2001, an explosion occurred in a shed containing some 300 tons of degraded ammonium nitrate at a chemical plant in Toulouse, belonging to one of France’s leading fertilizer producers. The explosion caused 31 deaths and more than 4,500 injuries, while destroying 27,000 buildings in the area.
In 2005, a disaster at a major oil refinery in the city of Texas, United States, was considered the worst industrial disaster in the United States in 15 years. A series of explosions occurred when a hydrocarbon isomerization unit was restarted and a distillation tower was flooded with hydrocarbons. As a result, 15 died and another 180 were injured.
In June 1974, near the town of Flixborough in the UK, an event took place that led to a significant tightening of UK government regulations covering hazardous industrial processes. A locally owned chemical plant, while repairing one of its chemical reactors, leaked 40 tons of cyclohexane in less than a minute, forming a vapor cloud about 200 m in diameter. The cloud exploded and completely destroyed the plant, also damaging some 1,800 buildings within a radius of more than 1.5 km.
In February 2000, a poisonous chemical spill in the Romanian city of Baia Mare destroyed wildlife and fish populations and threatened the water supply of 2.5 million people across Central and Eastern Europe. Approximately 100,000 m3 of cyanide, used in the gold extraction process at a local mine, was released into the Somes River when the wall of a mine deposit collapsed. The event was described as Europe’s worst disaster since Chernobyl.
The history of modern industry shows that organizations in the chemical business can never be too careful when dealing with such substances, nor too quick or well-equipped when trying to contain the effects.