The water in Quangang, East China's Fujian Province is contaminated with pollutants after a vessel spilled nearly 7 tons of C9 aromatics over the weekend.Photo: IC





The government of Quanzhou in East China's Fujian Province on Sunday released a report on a recent chemical spill incident, exposing that the actual leak of C9 aromatics was 69.1 tons, nearly 10 times higher than the initially released figure of "6.97 tons."

Having colluded to conceal the actually leak amount, a number of officials of Quangang district as well as the port where the incident took place on November 3, have been suspended from their posts, according to the report.

The suspended officials include Chen Xiangcheng, a member of the district Party committee, and Zhu Huiyang, the head of the district transport bureau.

The accident occurred when the tube connecting a vessel codenamed Tiantong 1, which is run by the Ningbo Zhoushan Tongzhou Shipping Company, and the Donggang Petrochemical Corporation-administrated wharf in Quangang broke on November 3, around 4 pm, according to the government report.

The figure of "6.97 tons" was first released by the Donggang Petrochemical Corporation, under the direction of the company's legal representative, whose surname is Huang. Such figure was later released to the public as an agreement reached by the vessel captain and the company side.

The Quanzhou government has since established a special medical squad to handle local residents who were exposed to the leaked chemical. A total of 69 residents have been received by the team, 11 of which were hospitalized for treatment. All patients were discharged by November 16.

The air quality in the surrounding areas returned to normal by November 5, and the waters were assessed as "moderately polluted" on November 6 and 7, and have returned to Level I and II at present.

China classifies water quality into six levels, ranging from level I, which is suitable for drinking after minimal treatment, to level VI for water that is severely contaminated.

Donggang Petrochemical Corporation has been suspended from doing business for rectification, and seven company employees including Huang and four operators on the vessel, have been arrested by the local police.

Global Times </s> The company responsible for a chemical spill that left dozens ill in east China "deliberately concealed" the extent of the leak, which was 10 times worse than reported, authorities said.

The spill in Fujian province happened in the early hours of November 4 when a tube transferring the chemicals from a wharf to a tanker broke, spilling 69.1 tonnes of C9 aromatics into the sea.

Fujian Donggang Petrochemical Company, the firm responsible for the incident, had previously reported just 6.97 tonnes.

"From the start, Donggang Petrochemical deliberately concealed, maliciously colluded, and forged evidence," said a statement released by the local Quanzhou city government on Sunday.

According to local authorities, mid-level and higher-up employees were told to keep the real volume of the chemical spill secret at a meeting following the incident in order to "escape" the legal consequences.

Later, the company under-reported the spill and blamed the hose rupture on old and damaged parts.

The local government also accused the petrochemical firm of disorderly management and weak safety protocols.

So far, authorities have arrested seven people over the incident.

Three are employees of the Fujian Donggang Petrochemical Company, which operates the wharf, and four are crew members of the tanker involved in the leak.

Earlier this month, residents near the coast who had come into contact with the C9 reported dizziness, nausea, and breathing difficulties.

C9 is typically used to produce adhesives, printing ink and paint, and is toxic.

A total of 69 residents were hospitalised after the leak, though all are now in "good condition", the state-run China Daily reported Monday.

It is the latest alleged corporate cover-up to make waves in China.

In October, Chinese authorities slapped penalties totalling a whopping $1.3 billion on a pharmaceutical company that fabricated records for its rabies vaccines.

Though authorities said the suspect vaccines did not enter the market, the case provoked outrage from consumers fed up with recurring product-safety scandals, particularly in the drug sector.

In 2008, China was hit with one of its most explosive health scandals when 300,000 children fell ill and six were killed by milk powder laced with the chemical melamine to give the appearance of higher protein levels. Melamine is usually used to make plastic. </s> An explosion at a pesticide plant in eastern China has killed 47 people and injured more than 600, state media said on Friday, the latest casualties in a series of industrial accidents that has angered the public.

The blast occurred on Thursday at the Chenjiagang Industrial Park in the city of Yancheng, in Jiangsu province, and the fire was finally brought under control at 3 a.m. on Friday (1900 GMT), state television said.

Survivors were taken to 16 hospitals with 640 people being treated for injuries. Thirty-two of them were critically injured, it said.

The fire at a plant owned by the Tianjiayi Chemical Company spread to neighboring factories. Children at a kindergarten in the vicinity were also injured in the blast, media reported.

The cause of the explosion was under investigation, but the company — which produces more than 30 organic chemical compounds, some of which are highly flammable — has been cited and fined for work safety violations in the past, the China Daily said.

President Xi Jinping, who is in Italy on a state visit, ordered all-out efforts to care for the injured and to “earnestly maintain social stability,” state television said.

Authorities must step up action to prevent such incidents from happening and find out the cause of the blast as quickly as possible, Xi added.

“There have recently been a series of major accidents, and all places and relevant departments must fully learn the lessons from these,” the report cited Xi as saying.

The Jiangsu environmental protection bureau said in a late Thursday statement the environmental monitoring station in the area had found no abnormal concentrations of toluene, xylene or benzene.

Concentrations of acetone and chloroform outside the perimeter of the explosion zone were also within normal limits, it added.

Jiangsu will launch inspections on chemical producers and warehouses, according to an emergency notice published by official media on Friday.

The notice, published on the news website of Jiangsu province’s Communist Party, said the government would shut down any chemical firms found not complying with regulations on dangerous chemicals.

Public anger over safety standards has grown in China over industrial accidents ranging from mining disasters to factory fires that have marred three decades of swift economic growth.

In 2015, 165 people were killed in a series of explosions at a chemical warehouse in the northern city of Tianjin.

The explosions at Tianjin, one of the world’s busiest ports and not far from the capital, Beijing, were big enough to be seen by satellites and register on earthquake sensors.

Despite repeated pledges by the government to tighten safety, chemical plants in particular have been plagued by disasters.

In November, a series of blasts during the delivery of a flammable gas at a chemical manufacturer killed 23 people. </s> BEIJING (AP) — An explosion outside a chemical plant in northeastern China early Wednesday killed at least 22 people and destroyed scores of vehicles, in the latest challenge to efforts to boost industrial safety in…

BEIJING (AP) — An explosion outside a chemical plant in northeastern China early Wednesday killed at least 22 people and destroyed scores of vehicles, in the latest challenge to efforts to boost industrial safety in the world’s second-largest economy.

The blast occurred just after midnight at a loading area next to the plant operated by the Hebei Shenghua Chemical Industry Co. Ltd., according to a statement from the Zhangjiakou city government. The plant is located in Zhangjiakou, which is to play host to the 2022 Winter Olympics.

Another 22 people were injured and 38 trucks and 12 passenger cars were destroyed by fire, the statement said.

“We request that citizens do not go to the site to watch in order to avoid disrupting recovery efforts,” it said.

An official at the city government propaganda department, who gave only his surname, Gao, said the accident’s cause was still under investigation and no other information could be provided.

Footage from state broadcaster China Central Television showed row after row of charred tanker trucks with smoke still rising from some of them, hours after the explosion occurred.

On its website, Hebei Shenghua described itself as a “backbone enterprise of the city, and for the domestic chlor-alkali industry and one of the Top 500 chemical enterprises in the country.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the chlor-alkali electrolysis process is used mainly to manufacture chlorine, along with hydrogen and sodium hydroxide solution.

Chlorine is one of the most commonly produced chemicals, widely used in the textile and paper industries, as well as for general cleaning and disinfecting and as a raw material for synthetic organic chemistry. It is also an essential component of construction materials, solvents and insecticides.

Other products made at the plant include PVC resins, caustic soda, hydrochloric acid, oxygen, chlorine, dissolved acetylene, coated kettle agent, water treatment chemicals and new building materials, according to the company website.

The company is a subsidiary of state-owned China National Chemical Corporation, China’s largest chemical company, listed 167th on the Fortune Global 500 list.

Industrial safety is a major concern in China, where requirements for the storage and transport of chemicals and other dangerous products are often weakly enforced.

A massive explosion in 2015 traced to improperly stored chemicals killed at least 173 people in Tianjin, about an hour east of Beijing.

More recently, 52 people were sickened when around 7 tons of the common chemical additive C9 leaked while workers were loading barrels onto a ship in Fujian province on Nov. 4.

While the ruling Communist Party emphasizes improvements in industrial safety, the authorities remain extremely sensitive about the potential for social unrest.

Over recent years, grass-roots movements have brought thousands of people onto the streets in cities across China to protest accidents and plans for chemical plants, garbage incinerators and other projects deemed harmful to the environment.

In the C9 leak case, police staged a late night raid on the hotel room of a reporter writing about the accident for one of China’s most respected business media groups. The officers, who said they were conducting a routine inspection, departed after conducting a search, but footage of the raid was leaked online, prompting the local police department to issue a rare apology.

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed. </s> SHANGHAI/BEIJING (Reuters) - An explosion at a chemical plant in China has killed 19 people and injured 12, authorities said on Friday, the latest deadly industrial incident in the world’s largest producer of chemicals.

It comes amid a drive to strengthen industrial safety, with China ramping up checks over the last year, in the wake of some high-profile incidents at coal mines and chemical plants.

The cause of Thursday evening’s blast at Yibin Hengda Technology in an industrial park several hours southeast of Chengdu, the capital of the southwestern province of Sichuan, is not yet known, the local government in Jiang’an county said.

The injured are in stable condition and an investigation has begun, state news agency Xinhua said.

The company, which makes chemicals for the food and pharmaceutical industries, did not immediately answer telephone calls from Reuters to seek information.

Photographs on Chinese social media showed a huge fire and plumes of smoke rising from the facility. The fire, which broke out early on Thursday evening, was put out by 11:30 p.m., the government said in its statement.

A trio of three-storey buildings were reduced to their steel frames by the explosion, the Sichuan Daily newspaper said, citing eyewitness accounts.

Windows of nearby buildings were shattered by the explosion at the factory, which is surrounded by a sand and gravel plant, it added.

The plant has three production lines, making 300 tonnes per year (tpy) of benzoic acid, which is used in food preservatives, and 2,000 tpy of 5-nitroisophthalic acid, for medicines and dyes, the regional environmental protection bureau says.

China’s breakneck pace of economic growth during the last decade has resulted in a spate of industrial accidents.

In 2015, an explosion in a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin killed 165 people. Last year a blast at a petrochemical plant in eastern Shandong province killed eight people and injured nine. </s> YANCHENG, China (Reuters) - An explosion at a pesticide plant in eastern China has killed 62 people, state media said late on Friday, with 34 people critically injured and 28 missing, the latest casualties in a series of industrial accidents that has angered the public.

The blast occurred on Thursday at the Chenjiagang Industrial Park in the city of Yancheng, in Jiangsu province, and the fire was finally brought under control at 3 a.m. local time on Friday (1900 GMT), state television said.

Survivors were taken to 16 hospitals with 640 people being treated for injuries, state media had said earlier.

The fire at a plant owned by the Tianjiayi Chemical Company spread to neighboring factories. Children at a nearby kindergarten were also hurt, media said.

The cause of the explosion is being investigated, but the company - which produces more than 30 organic chemical compounds, some highly flammable - has been cited and fined for work safety violations in the past, the China Daily said.

Police, some wearing face masks, sealed off roads to the plant. The blast smashed windows in the village of Wangshang two kilometers (1.2 miles) away, and stunned villagers likened it to an earthquake.

"There was one loud bang followed by a long rumble," one, who gave his family name as Wang, told Reuters. "All the windows were smashed. I went to have a look. Near the site there was blood everywhere. People were crushed."The village stands beside a murky mildewed pond and was built in 2013 for people displaced by the construction of the industrial park where the blast took place. Dozens of Wangshang residents work at the park, and many have not come home.

Many buildings had broken windows and further structural damage, but villagers have not been evacuated. Unlike the police on site, none of them wore masks and had not been advised to.

President Xi Jinping, who is in Italy on a state visit, ordered all-out efforts to care for the injured and to "earnestly maintain social stability", state television said.

Authorities must step up action to prevent such incidents and determine the cause of the blast as quickly as possible, Xi added.

"There has recently been a series of major accidents, and all places and relevant departments must fully learn the lessons from these," the report cited Xi as saying.

The Jiangsu environmental protection bureau said late on Friday that a team of 126 inspectors found various degrees of contamination in local water samples, with nitrobenzene concentrations exceeding standards at one location. Some volatile organic chemical measurements far exceeded surface water standards - 15 times over in one case.

Concentrations of acetone and chloroform outside the blast zone were also within normal limits, it added.

Jiangsu will carry out inspections chemical producers and warehouses, an emergency notice said on Friday.

The notice, published on the news website of the province's Communist Party, said the government would shut down chemical firms found not to be complying with regulations on dangerous chemicals.

Public anger over safety standards has grown in China over industrial accidents, ranging from mining disasters to factory fires, that have marred three decades of swift economic growth.

In 2015, 165 people were killed in explosions at a chemical warehouse in the northern city of Tianjin, one of the world's busiest ports, which is not far from the capital, Beijing.

Those blasts were big enough to be seen by satellites and register on earthquake sensors.

Despite repeated government pledges to tighten safety, disasters have hit chemical plants in particular, with 23 people killed in November in a series of blasts during the delivery of a flammable gas at a chemical maker. </s> (Bloomberg) -- A blast at a Taiwan-listed company’s factory in China on Sunday killed seven people, the government says, just over a week after an explosion in the same eastern province left scores dead.

The explosion at a metal-processing plant owned by Waffer Technology (Kunshan) Ltd. also injured five people, the government of Kunshan, which is in Jiangsu province and borders Shanghai, said in a post on its Weibo social media account. The blast was caused by a container of scrap metal bursting into flames and setting a workshop ablaze just after 7 a.m., the government said.

Waffer Technology (Kunshan) is a major production base for Taiwan-listed Waffer Technology Corp., according to the latter’s website.

The industrial accident comes 10 days after an explosion at chemical plant in Chenjiagang, Jiangsu province. The official Xinhua News Agency updated the death toll for that incident to 78 on March 25. Police took people into custody over the incident in Chenjiagang, Xinhua reported earlier.

China has been seeking to make workplaces safer after industrial accidents that included a massive explosion in 2015 at a chemical warehouse in the northern port city of Tianjin that killed 173 people. A blast in 2014 at an auto-parts plant in Suzhou, also in Jiangsu, killed 146 people.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Dandan Li in Beijing at dli395@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrew Davis at abdavis@bloomberg.net, Philip Glamann, Stanley James </s> BEIJING (AFP) - An explosion at an electronics component manufacturer in east China on Sunday (March 31) killed seven and injured five others, local authorities said.

The blast happened when a container for storing scrap metal burst into flames outside a factory in an export processing zone in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, the local government said on its official WeChat social media account.

“The cause of the accident outside Kunshan Waffer Technology is still under investigation,” the statement said.

The fire from the storage unit spread to a nearby factory workshop, it added, while one of the five people injured was in a critical condition.

The incident came barely a week after one of China's worst recent industrial accidents, in which an explosion at a chemical plant killed 78 people and injured hundreds.

The powerful explosion in the eastern city of Yancheng toppled several buildings in the industrial park, blew out windows of nearby homes and even dented metal garage doors. It prompted the State Council, China's Cabinet, to order a nationwide inspection of chemical firms.

Deadly industrial accidents are common in China, where safety regulations are often poorly enforced.

In November, a gas leak at a plant in the northern Chinese city of Zhangjiakou, which will host the 2022 Winter Olympics, killed 24 people and injured 21 others. Leaked chloroethylene came in contact with a fire source, causing the explosion, the authorities said in a February report that revealed the Chinese chemical firm responsible for the accident had concealed information and misled investigators.

In December, three students were killed in a blast at a Beijing university laboratory during a research experiment on wastewater treatment.

Last July, a blast at a chemical plant in south-west Sichuan province left 19 dead and 12 injured. It was later revealed the company had undertaken illegal construction which did not pass safety checks.

In 2015, China saw one of its worst industrial accidents when giant chemical blasts in the northern port city of Tianjin killed at least 165 people. The explosions caused more than US$1 billion (S$1.36 billion) in damage and sparked widespread anger at a perceived lack of transparency over the accident's causes and its environmental impact. </s> City of Balikpapan is struggling to deal with toxic smoke from fire that killed four fisherman

The Indonesian port city of Balikpapan, on the island of Borneo, has declared a state of emergency after a devastating oil spill spread along the coast, killing four fisherman when it ignited.

The oil spill, which occurred over the weekend, has now stretched to an area of around seven square miles (18 sq km), contaminating the sea and polluting the air with thick black smoke. One protected dugong has already washed up dead on the shore.

The four fisherman died after being caught up in the fire caused by the spill – another is still missing – and the port city of Balikpapan, which has a population of 700,000, is struggling to deal with the toxic smoke.

China: oil slick from sunken tanker trebles in size Read more

“We’re in a state of emergency because of the oil spill’s impact,” said the Balikpapan city secretary MN Fadli. Around 1,200 people who live in the Penajam North Penajam Paser subdistrict reported symptoms of nausea, vomiting and breathing problems after the spill caught fire on Saturday and the city has distributed masks to help residents cope with the smell.

“I may sound like I’m exaggerating, but the state of the bay is like that of a gas station,” said Fadli.

The spill is thought to have been caused by a bulk coal carrier, which was carrying coal from Indonesia to Malaysia, but samples have also been taken from Pertamina, a state-owned oil refinery that has pipelines across the bay. Pertamina has denied it is responsible for the leak.

The full environmental impact of the oil spill is not yet known but it is already affecting the livelihoods of the local fisherman who rely on going out in their boats every day.

The Indonesian Environment and Forestry Ministry said a recovery team was working to contain and clean up the spill. Rasio Ridho Sani, the director general of the ministry, said: “Our team in the field is investigating it thoroughly. We will soon find out how big the impact is on the environment and who will be held responsible.”
The chemical spill accident in Quangang District, Quanzhou, China on November 4 is found to be 10 times worse than initially reported. According to the government of Quanzhou, the actual leak of C9 aromatics was 69.1 tonnes instead of 6.97 tonnes understated by the Fujian Donggang Petrochemical Company. Several officials of Quangang District have been suspended from their posts and seven company employees have been arrested by the police in connection with the cover-up.