Chemicals out of contro

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British industry seems to have had quite a bit of trouble keeping dangerous chemicals under control recently. First, there was a fire at the Nor Cal swimming supplies warehouse in Wallington, Surrey.

Unknown to the Health and Safety Executive and to the local fire brigade, large amounts of sodium hypochlorite, used for making chlorine, were kept on the premises. Unfortunately, fire tends to produce chlorine when it encounters sodium hypochlorite, and a great cloud of it caused the evacuation of 500 residents in their night-clothes one night in August.

Even though chlorine is highly dangerous (it was used to gas soldiers in the First World War), Nor-Cal was under no legal obligation to report its dangerous stores to the government.

Injuring

The second incident did involve government regulations, though the company appears to have avoided them quite legally. Storage drums at the Chemstar plant in Manchester exploied in early September, ‹illing one worker and seriously injuring another. 200 people were evacuated.

The council had already ordered the firm to move some 750 tons of chemicals in 40 gallon drums away from nearby houses at Stalybridge, but the firm had appealed, saying there was no danger to residents, and had been given till December to move then. There is an official list of 500 industrial sites in Britain with "major hazards" but the Chemstar plant was far too small to be on it. It would have needed 10,000 tons of solvents to make the list.

In case you were wondering, the list is secret. This is so you don't worry too much.

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