Toxic fears after Tianjin blasts
Print Edition
CHINESE authorities were struggling yesterday to extinguish fires and identify dangerous chemicals at a devastated industrial site, two days after giant explosions killed dozens and left residents in fear of being cloaked in a toxic cloud.
Officials in the northern port city of Tianjin, where the blasts killed at least 56 people and injured more than 700, told a news conference they did not yet know what materials were at the hazardous goods storage facility that exploded, or the cause of the blast.
The death toll included at least 21 firefighters.
A team of 217 nuclear and biochemical materials specialists from the Chinese military has traveled to Tianjin to inspect the site.
With dozens of people still missing, authorities were also focused on trying to find any more potential survivors.
There was a rare moment to cheer yesterday morning when rescue workers pulled a 19-year-old firefighter from the rubble.
However up to 1,000 firefighters were still struggling to extinguish blazes at the site, with smoke billowing from three areas, adding to uncertainty over whether more chemicals may be leaking.
Some police wore no protective clothing, while others had full-face gas masks, although an environmental expert told an official press conference that toxic gas indicators were within normal ranges and the air “should be safe for residents to breathe.”
Air and water quality near the site of Wednesday night’s blasts are being closely monitored as conditions remain unclear.
“So far, the air quality near the blast site remains normal and will not have a harmful effect on residents,” Feng Yinchang, an environmental expert, told reporters.
Some of the monitoring stations detected toluene, chloroform, methylbenzene and volatile organic compounds, all hazardous pollutants, between Wednesday night and noon on Thursday, but their concentrations were decreasing because of wind blowing toward the sea, Feng said.
As of Thursday noon, all toxic gas indicators were within “normal range.” However, the quality of air and water will continue to be closely monitored, Feng added.
Discharge into the sea was closed on Thursday morning and rainwater drainage pipes were also closed in the afternoon, said Wang Lianqing, a senior engineer with the Tianjin Association of Environmental Protection Industry.
All contaminated water has been contained within a sewage plant, said Wang, and the plant has adopted a biochemical treatment system to process the polluted water. An expert team was working on-site to assess the best plan, he added.
Greenpeace warned on Thursday that rain could transfer airborne chemicals into water systems. It said it was “critical” that authorities monitor the situation closely and identify what substances were being released into the air.
Tianjin work safety official Gao Huaiyou told reporters yesterday that authorities did not know which of the many dangerous substances the company was authorized to store were on the site at the time.
As a transhipment facility, items were normally only kept for brief periods and “the types and amount of the dangerous materials are not fixed,” he said.
The company’s own records were damaged in the blast, he added, and information from its executives was unreliable as it did not accord with its Customs filings.
Under Chinese regulations, warehouses stocking dangerous materials must be at least a kilometer away from surrounding public buildings and main roads, but there were two residential compounds and several main roads within that distance. Two hospitals, a convention center, several residential compounds and a football pitch were also nearby,
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