Information about the storage of dangerous and toxic chemicals has to be made public in certain foreign countries. However, in China, companies do not need to identify and release details of the dangerous chemicals they are storing, which is a major management flaw, said Ma Jun, director of the Institute for Public and Environmental Affairs, in an exclusive interview with China.org.cn.

Two deadly blasts rocked a warehouse in Tianjin Binhai New Area on late Aug. 12. According to the official Weibo account of the China Earthquake Networks Center, the first blast was equivalent to detonating three tons of TNT while the second one was equivalent to detonating 21 tons. The fatal blasts have left at least 56 people dead as of Friday afternoon, including 21 firefighters.

Experts are currently working to uncover the cause of the powerful explosions. According to CCTV News reports, there was calcium carbide inside the warehouse, a chemical which reacts with water or wet air to create acetylene, a highly flammable gas. It can explode when it reaches a certain density. Dry graphite powders or dry sands, not water, should be used to extinguish fires caused by calcium carbide, said Sun Chenglin, a researcher at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In addition, there was more than 700 tons of sodium cyanide at the blast site, which can create hydrogen cyanide, a poisonous and flammable gas, after reacting with wet air or acids, the Beijing News Reported. Sodium cyanide can cause an explosion if it reacts with chlorate or nitrate.

The Ministry of Environmental Protection said on Friday morning that chemical oxygen demand (COD) and cyanide had been detected in the underground pipelines of the two blocked discharge outlets in the blast site, with excessive discharge three to eight times higher than the standard.

Answering the question of whether rainfall would lead to secondary pollution from the blast site, Wang Lianqing, senior engineer of Tianjin Association of Environmental Protection Industry said that some regular rainfall would not cause further accidents as the whole site has been blocked off.

Ma Jun pointed out that it is crucial to ensure that polluted water at the blast site can be completely collected and correctly treated. “If polluted water flows into the Bohai Sea, it will destroy the marine ecosystem,” Ma said.

He also noted that if polluted water seeps into the underground water or the soil, the remediation work would be extremely difficult and would cost a huge amount of money.

Ma called on safety supervision agencies and environmental protection departments to pay greater attention to the Tianjin accident. He doubted that related agencies realize there had been such a large amount of dangerous chemicals at the blast site, and whether they had found potential safety loopholes and issued rectification orders. follow the international convention and set up a system for disclosing harmful and toxic information, in order to break down barriers between safety supervision, environmental protection and traffic agencies, imposing pressure on enterprises and forcing them to operate under public supervision.

However, local residents would probably be unwilling to live in a place piled up with toxic chemicals.

“Production using hazardous chemicals and local residents’ tangible benefits have become a game,” Ma said. “Is it necessary to use a huge amount of toxic chemicals during the production process? These substances impose threats to our environment and health even if there are no accidents,” Ma added.

He expects that a balance can be found , which will lead to significant cuts in the use of toxic chemicals. “This is the true solution we need,” Ma said.

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