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China Scrambles To Hide Toxic Fallout Of Tianjin Chemical Explosion
Two days after an "apocalyptic" explosion in the port city of Tianjin killed at least 50 people and vaporized a bit of excess auto inventory, Chinese officials are struggling to explain what happened and reassure a nervous public.
The blast - footage of which is reminiscent of a nuclear detonation - likely stemmed from what The New York times called a "witches brew" of toxic chemicals warehoused in the industrial zone. That has residents on edge, as many wonder if the air is safe to breathe. Here’s The Times:
They wondered if even the air was safe because of the smoke, still billowing hours later from vestiges of the inferno, which destroyed an industrial zone near the port. Many people wore masks.
“Right now, we don’t know anything,” said Sun Meirong, 52, an office cleaner who descended 13 flights of stairs with her 1-year-old grandson after the explosions blew in her apartment windows and front door.
Questions loomed over the precise reasons the chemicals had ignited, detonating in frightening fireballs that registered on earthquake scales, engulfed hundreds of new cars awaiting export and shattered windows in high-rises a mile away.
At least one chemical known to have been stockpiled at the site, calcium carbide, can emit flammable gases when it becomes wet. Some outside experts speculated that firefighters, in their effort to douse the flames, may have inadvertently contributed to the explosions.
“If enough water gets in there, calcium carbide is going to very quickly decompose,” said Chris Weber, president and chief executive of Dr. Hazmat Inc., a hazardous-chemical consulting concern in Longmont, Colo. “The most likely and most violent reaction would be the calcium carbide.”
On Thursday afternoon, the site still smoldered as Tianjin officials, unsure about the nature of the chemicals, let the blaze extinguish on its own.
According to the Tianjin Tanggu Environmental Monitoring Station,calcium carbide was one of several toxic industrial chemicals stored by the company. The others included sodium cyanide, which can produce hydrogen cyanide, a volatile and flammable liquid; and toluene diisocyanate, which can also react violently in the presence of water.
In a statement on Thursday, Greenpeace warned that the chemicals threatened human health. It said that sodium cyanide, used in mining, is especially toxic, while toluene diisocyanate, used to make polyurethane products, is a carcinogen.
With rain forecast for Friday, Greenpeace also warned about the danger of airborne pollutants seeping into groundwater.
Even Chinese media admits that determining exactly what was stored at Tianjin and thus what may or may not now be in the air and water is at this point largely impossible. Via Xinhua:
The dangerous chemicals stored in the warehouses that exploded on Wednesday night in Tianjin Port can not be determined at the moment, authorities said at a press conference on Friday.
Gao Huaiyou, deputy director of Tianjin's work safety watchdog, cited major discrepancies between the accounts of company management and customs, and damage to the company's office as reasons they are unable to identify the chemicals.
And while it's apparently too early for China to order that the media stop reporting anything negative about the explosion in Tianjin just as they did about last month's explosion in equity markets, it does look like efforts to "clean up" the mess (in a literary sense) have begun. From People's Daily:
Authorities tasked with marine monitoring announced there were no hazardous chemicals detected in waters off the blast site in north China's port city Tianjin on Friday.
A statement from the State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said major measurement of seawater composition did not show any anomaly compared with historical records.
Hazardous materials such as cyanide and volatile phenol were not detected, while the variety of zooplankton was not affected either, it added.
The results were made after 177 seawater samples were taken by local marine monitors in Tianjin. The SOA said it will update seawater status if major changes are found.
One would certainly think that any endeavor to determine if chemicals from the warehouses had leaked into the ocean would be complicated by the fact that authorities aren't yet sure what chemicals they're trying to detect, but in any event, we certainnly imagine that the "fallout" (both literally and figuratively) from Wednesday's disaster will be difficult to cover up and may show up in a few very unpredictable places.
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You got to blow it up to see what's in it !!!
What do you do when there are too many Chinese?
… all-out leveraged stock buy -
FULL HAMMER DOWN !
So nobody working at the storgage facility knows what they were storing off the top of their head? I suppose it's still more transparent than the Obama administration.
Wait a few weeks. The fallout will hit the EPA sensors in Los Angeles. They'll tell you all about it from their safe labs in Washington DC.
There isn't a single GC/MS facility anywhere in the area?
You think so? I don't. We can't even get good measurements of radioactivity on the West Coast from the EPA's reporting on effects from Fukushima.
I want to know how much they were storing of the really volitile stuff. The was an f'n BIG explosion. Made a Daisy Cutter look small. Hell, that made the Texas fertilizer plant explosion look like a warm-up.
Blow it up real good! https://youtu.be/uHkvD7-u7y8
https://scontent-lga1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/11870868_9987...
You didn't build that!
LOL thats so wong...totally wong
Send the EPA!
Is the currency war turning hot and physical? Was it America's doing?
https://biblicisminstitute.wordpress.com/news-with-views/
"You Were Only Supposed To Blow The Bloody Doors Off" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_PX1cVuaVA&feature=player_detailpage
Synchronicity.
You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.
Where was this biting commentary from the New York Times in September 2001? Christie Todd Whitman fucking lied about that toxic stew and nobody said a word. Now hundreds of people have died or are dying a slow, painful death.
There was no way, in hell, that ANYONE was going to stop those animals from rushing to scene of the crime, and once there, they HAD to help, they wanted to do it at any cost, and now we know the cost so thanks for job and oh yea, we'll make sure it never happens again if that will help you sleep better at night.
Like inside your chromozones.
"Witches bew" is the right phrase because witches brewed it.
Could probably figure it out from the lungs of the dead.
Charcoal?
Carbon Cledits Prease.
China is trying to limit fallout from the blast by limiting coverage:
Chinese police and security personnel reportedly turned away residents who attempted to photograph the blast site. Journalists were barred from one of the main hospitals treating victims of the explosion.
According to the New York Times, Tianjin’s Internet Police issued a warning that anyone spreading rumours about the blast will be “severely dealt with according to the law.” Critical social media posts reportedly were deleted. One social media user, who claimed to work for Tianjin TV, denounced the official response to the disaster, and stated that while his network had 100 reporters in the city, only central government-approved accounts of the catastrophe could be broadcast.
Underlying the nervous response of Chinese officials to the Tianjin explosion is the deepening crisis of the entire CCP regime. The blast occurred the day after authorities began to devalue the yuan, a measure without precedent in recent years, in response to figures showing yet another slump in exports, and a major decline in factory activity.
A protracted slowdown of the Chinese economy is calling into question, in the minds of working people, the political legitimacy of the regime. For years, it has subordinated every aspect of social life to the pursuit of economic growth. Amid conditions of slump, the gulf between the tiny layer of billionaires upon which the CCP rests, and the many millions of workers confronting an escalating social crisis is becoming ever more glaring, and presages major social upheavals.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/14/chin-a14.html
Life is funny that way .... how things burn .... when you can't sell them ?
Well that certainly helped to take the people's minds off of the collapsing stock market and devaluation of their currency. . .
Behold the ultimate diversion! A spontaneously combustible transexual lion.
Good news ..... Hillary's server .... survived the blast !
send in the epa-they will fix things asap!
There is still nothing on it. "Oh, you want the SERVER??" Well here it is...you said nothing about the data! #lyingcunt
Some have postulated that some sort of nuke was involved, same as WTC. An analysis of the ash will prove or disprove this. The long term proof will be the incidence of cancer among first responders. If it was a nuke-like blast, the US neocons have gone full retard.
Speaking of calcium carbide... do you know what happens when you combine 50,000 lbs of aluminum with 50,000 lbs of calcium sulfide in the world's largest improvised rocket stove (actually w/ the floor slab above it is more accurately the world's largest improvised crucible furnace)? One hell of a thermite reduction is possible, in fact one could liquefy solid titanium if they do it right.
Both messes are way more complicated than whether any individual chemical involved is carcinogenic or toxic, because there are many large scale chemical reactions occurring, not just the addition the addition of water to calcium carbide or A-1 sauce to office furniture.
"It's contained."
nah, pull it...
Hopefully all the toxins floated away in that big mushroom cloud
This kind of thing is just an ignorant bean counter investment group away from happening in your neighborhood. In the Atlanta area, a Zep subsidiary had a large chemical fire last year. The smoke cloud covered most of the north metro area. We were told it was safe until about 2 weeks later when it was admitted the chemicals were hazardous. Ooops.
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/fire-crews-battle-large-warehouse-f...
And continuing its stellar safety record, last night one of ZEP's tractor trailer trucks go loose form a local chemical plant parking lot and crushed a pick-up truck with a young family inside.
http://www.11alive.com/story/news/local/2015/08/14/mother-killed-emerson...
One John Deere employee died and several others were injured...and I assume some tractors were in the fire too...inventory reduction
You have to wonder if a mobile phone detonator was used.
Where could I've misplaced my mobile phone?
I'd better call it, ring ring
Kaboom
Oh looky, it's over there.
We'll need to follow the insurance policy payouts.
This was about a Kilometer north of the Tiajin Shearaton and Hoiday Inn, tough day for Road warriors.
Bet they wished their reservations were for Crowne Plaza Binhai.
I stayed in Tianjin a few times. One of the waitresses was from a smaller town east of Beijing and she said her parents told her there had been a big explosion there one night. I didn't think anything about it at the time.
It's already falling on California strawberries.
Yesterday we got chemtrailed like crazy in southern california
So, you wonder why China builds empty cities. Now you know. Just bus them over and we can have 10,000 workers level the old site and start building a whole new city. Helps with keeping full employment. Merica should try it.
Watch CAT stock rise.
How do you know it was a chemical explosion?
Because the Chinese told us?
LOLOL
NBC Teams now on site.
https://twitter.com/XHNews/status/631781367542476800/photo/1
The Chinese government only cares because its embarrassing and now the news has gone worldwide. The rest of it is just collateral damage.
Moar lies, phishes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xingang_Port_oil_spill
Petrochemical plant massive fireball explosion in Rizhao, China, July 16, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbsmWg5bCWg
Oil Pipeline Fire In The Moscow River, Aug 12, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C16Qhx7OEZE
Huge explosion at port nearest capital of Beijing, Aug 12, 2015
If the port of los angeles blew up about 5% of the current inventory of crack cocaine in the US would be present in the fallout. Methylamine being rocket fuel the Nazis learned is highly unstable and the primary ingredient to the most efficient manufacturing technique of methamphetamine, and China being the major producer, having had shipments to the Americas of up to 900,000 gallons intercepted by the US & Mexican coast guards, how much methylamine is in this one? 900,000 gallons would make a decent mushroom cloud.
I have hexamethylenetetramine in my backpack in case I need to walk 42 miles home from work after the Big One strikes Cali. I think I will forgo a warm meal and use it as a trade for all the meth heads going through withdrawal.
Miffed
Veteran's Today has former IAEA scientists on staff. Initial findings is that some type of nuclear detonation did occur. The aim here was not to kill people, but to stop production. This is being investigated as we speak. VT has its own forensics lab, equal to or superior to the FBI et al ..
Mike Harris and Dr. Preston James are on the air as I type. They are discussing what happens next. The White Dragons are not most forgiving. Keep an eye on either Tel Aviv, City of London, or Dachau. Maybe even Rome (The Vatican). Again, these White Dragons are not to be trifled with. They are patient and tolerant to a point. When they act, you will know it ..