The recent major catastrophic explosion in the Chinese port of Tianjin is still being dealt with and will be investigated so we are told. What is clear is that numerous toxic chemicals appear to have been stored in one place at one time. The source of ignition may well be unknown but the reality is that when chemicals are stored in this way in ever greater numbers then this is what will happen, despite any claims to the contrary by those seeking to increase exports at human and environmental cost.
China’s misfortune is that the Western consumer will happily buy cheaper electronic items than buy from within their own countries. I am personally aware of the increasing traffic from this country into Britain ordered with a few internet clicks, and this really just fuels the consumption of chemicals which are used in some of the processes to make electronic equipment. One also should consider the way in which people in emerging industrial manufacturing powerhouses are treated and are paid, and how they are more likely to be exposed to dangerous chemicals than those here. The initial loss of life may yet compare into insignificance with the long term threats of toxic chemicals entering the environment and the food chain.
But before being all smug that things like this do not happen over in “the land of the free” or over here, it is quite apparent that they do. The US Environmental Protection Agency has recently shown its incompetence at polluting a River in Colorado, with the effects of someone’s get rich quick industrial plan that never had any real plan to deal with the toxic waste which resulted. This is the true Satanic face of Capitalism.
Some six years after a serious incident in Oldbury involving Rhodia’s Trinity street plant we are still awaiting to see what action the Health and Safety Executive are going to take. Perhaps we are not so different in covering things up concerning our own polluting chemical industries after all from China, but it helps from time to time to expose the masses by media pollution that there are other countries where things such as this will just never be released into the public domain whilst pretending that access to information here is more open and transparent.