On August 4, massive ammonium nitrate explosions occurred at the port of the city of Beirut, Lebanon, resulting in heavy casualties and property losses. Public attention is once again called to the issue of safety management of hazardous chemicals. On the day after Beirut’s blast, the Work Safety Commission of the State Council and the Ministry of Emergency Management held a national conference on workplace safety. The Work Safety Commission of the State Council would be dispatching inspection teams to conduct both announced and unannounced visits to key provinces and ports storing hazardous chemicals. Recently, a journalist from China Youth Daily conducted an interview with Professor Laijun Zhao, dean of Business School at the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, on the safety management of hazardous chemicals.
During this interview, Professor Zhao combined the lessons learned from the devastating 8·12 fires and explosions at the chemical warehouse of Tianjin Port Ruihai International Logistics and the recent ammonium nitrate explosions at the port of Beirut, identified the potential issues in China’s categorization and supervision of hazardous chemicals and hazardous goods, the potential problems in the safety monitoring of cross-provincial transportation of hazardous chemicals, and the regional joint prevention and control mechanism of hazardous chemicals, as well as potential issues in safety awareness in hazardous chemicals storage, and the industrial layout adjustment of hazardous chemicals, etc., and proposed corresponding recommendations in the hopes of building a seamless safety supervision system for hazardous chemicals and truly improving the safety management of hazardous chemicals in China.
Professor Zhao has been continuously studying the safety management of hazardous chemicals since 2005. He has completed over 20 various projects including those of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Shanghai Municipal Committee of the CPC, and enterprises, and established the National Hazardous Chemical Accident Case Database containing over 10,000 cases so far. After the 8·12 Tianjin Port explosions, he has accepted a number of interviews by Legal Daily, Southern Weekly, China Youth Daily, Caixi.com, among other media. Prof. Zhao also submitted many special reports on safety management of hazardous chemicals to both the state and the City of Shanghai, and obtained approvals from officials in the central and municipal governments.
Source: http://zqb.cyol.com/html/2020-08/12/nw.D110000zgqnb_20200812_2-07.htm
Translator: Jianjia He
