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pushing large corporations to pay attention to the environmental performance of their suppliers.
CHINA • MULTINATIONAL CHEMICAL COMPANIES SHOULD TAKE MORE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR INDUSTRIAL PARTNERS IN CHINA, SAYS A HARD-HITTING REPORT ON A FATAL EXPLOSION On 21 March 2019, a major explosion occurred at the Jiangsu Tianjiayi Chemical (JTC) plant in the Xiangshui Chemical Industrial Park, Yancheng City, Jiangsu Province, China. The blast, which was powerful enough to register on seismic monitoring systems, caused 78 deaths and injured more than 600 people. Authorities in the Yancheng Municipal Government have since closed all operations at the Xiangshui Chemical Industrial Park to look more closely at other hazards. The incident, which was not widely reported
European and North American chemical companies were still doing business with JTC, despite repeated alarms over poor environmental and safety standards at the plant. “Records indicate that at least four of the world’s global chemical giants – DuPont, Merck, BASF and Clariant – may count JTC in their supply chain. Yet these companies have kept their heads down about the urgent need to put their own shoulders to the wheel and join government and stakeholder efforts to
MULTIPLE VIOLATIONS Publicly available inspection records clearly suggest that JTC was an accident waiting to happen, IPE says. The factory had multiple serious safety and environmental violations on record – 13 types of safety hazards were documented in February 2018 by the former State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), now the Ministry of Emergency Management (MEM), including the lack of an emergency shut-off valve near the bottom of the benzene tanks that have been identified as the root of the March explosion. Environmentally, the factory was similarly operating well outside the law, with egregious infractions such as building a hidden pipeline to discharge pollutants into nearby waterways and evading supervision of its air emissions.
at the time, has drawn criticism from environmental groups in China, angry that
prevent similar incidents from happening again,” says a report on the incident published by the Institute of Public & Environmental Affairs (IPE), a Beijing-based group that is part of the ‘Green Choice Alliance’, a group of Chinese non-governmental organisations that promotes a global green supply chain by
It also appears that the situation at JTC is far from unique; many other chemical factories located in the Xiangshui Chemical Industrial Park where JTC operated and in adjacent industrial parks also have extensive documented environmental violations. Adding insult to injury, a nearby factory in Zhejiang
THE JTC EXPLOSION WAS ONLY ONE OF SEVERAL CHEMICAL PLANT INCIDENTS IN CHINA THIS YEAR
HCB MONTHLY | NOVEMBER 2019
