Responsible use of chemicals: A warning too grave to ignore

THOUGH not as catastrophic as the 1984 accident at the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, when nearly 4,000 people were killed and over half a million were injured, the Tianjin accident — death toll 114 so far — is another stark reminder of how very lethal the chemicals we all depend on can be if things go wrong.

It is a reminder too that some industrial plants need to have a decent buffer zone between them and residential areas, the very issue in play in the years of protest over the Corrib gasfield pipeline in Mayo.

One of the reasons the Chinese disaster has provoked such fury is that planning regulations designed to keep potentially dangerous factories a safe distance from homes were ignored, another indication that there is a flexibility on these matters in that country that hardly enhances it or generates confidence among investors considering doing business there.