Chemical Plant Explosions – 2005, Jilin

In China's northeastern Jilin Province, on November 13, 2005, a petrochemical plant explosion released 100 tons of toxic waste into the Songhua River. The Songhua leak of 2005 gained prominence in large part due to the inadequate reaction capacity displayed by central and local state agencies. Representatives from China's State Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) visited the UN Environmental Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi and the UN offices in Beijing on November 26 in order to provide detailed information regarding the Songhua spill. SEPA then continued to send the UN updates on a regular basis. Despite being a bold step on the side of the Chinese government, it didn't seek the UN until two full weeks after the first explosion in Jilin Province, when the pollution slick had already reached Harbin. It is likely safe to assume that this was the longest the Chinese government could wait without running the risk of conflict with Russia, whose border was downriver, even though the central government went public primarily because it could no longer keep information about the incident from its own citizens. This chemical explosion had an effect on different cities some are summarized below:

1. Effects on Jilin City 

An industrial water plant in Jilin City was shut down on the day of the blasts. Several hydroelectric plants upstream started releasing extra water about the same time in an effort to dilute the chemical that had flown into the Songhua River. Songhua River water deliveries were stopped on November 15, and other water deliveries were stopped on November 18. On November 23, the water supplies were resumed.

To Read About : Chemical Pollution in China: What The Heck's Going On? Click here

2. Effects On The Province Of Heilongjiang

Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang, was negatively impacted when the local Harbin administration announced a shutdown of the water infrastructure for maintenance on November 21. Harbin is heavily reliant on the Songhua River for its water supply. Other water sources in the city had already been cut off without warning from the Harbin local government, which caused panic among the city's inhabitants.

3. Effects on Russia

The poisonous slick entered Russia on December 16 and affected the city of Khabarovsk there. The slick was now considerably less thick. However, Russia had extra wells drilled and citizens are given instructions to store water before the slick reached the city as a precaution against contamination.

Contaminant water

Following the explosions, more than 100 tons of pollutants with toxic ingredients, including benzene and nitrobenzene, entered the Songhua River, an arm of the Amur River. Pollutants from Jilin province went through a number of cities and counties before entering the Songhua River. The Heilongjiang province and its city, Harbin, were then negatively impacted. The slick traveled through Jiamusi city in eastern Heilongjiang before entering the Amur River near the Sino-Russian border. The Amur River formerly had benzene levels that were 108 times higher than what was considered acceptable for human consumption. The poisonous sleek then traveled through a number of Russian territories, including the Jewish Autonomous Oblast and the Khabarovsk Krai districts of the Russian Far East, notably the cities of Khabarovsk and Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The slack then made its way into the Pacific Ocean through the Strait of Tartary. Among the regions where water pollution was a problem.

To Read About: Bhopal Disaster

Chemistry Advances That Transformed the World

Not every discovery and molecule is made equally. Some have ruined the environment, saved billions of lives, or made the world more colorful. Here are some discoveries that change the world.

1. PENICILLIN (R-C9H11N2O4S)

Your life was probably spared by penicillin. Without it, a thorn prick or sore throat could rapidly turn fatal. The discovery of penicillin is usually attributed to Alexander Fleming, who made the illustrious observation in 1928 that a mold growing on his Petri dishes prevented the growth of nearby bacteria and therefore made the first antibiotic. Despite his greatest efforts, he was unable to extract any usable penicillin. The penicillin saga took a ten-year hiatus when Fleming gave up. Howard Florey, an Australian pharmacologist, and his team of chemists didn't discover how to sufficiently purify penicillin until 1939 and before the 1940s when penicillin became widely used, wounds and illnesses like syphilis were fatal; since then, antibiotics have saved an estimated 200 million lives.

However, due to the fact that World War II was still raging, there was a shortage of scientific equipment. As a result, the crew improvised a fully functional penicillin production facility out of bathtubs, milk churns, and bookcases. Unsurprisingly, the press was giddy about this new wonder medicine, but Florey and his colleagues were reluctant to garner attention. Fleming, however, seized the spotlight. When Margaret Hutchinson Rousseau, a chemical engineer, transformed Florey's Heath Robinson-like idea into a full-scale production facility, penicillin manufacture began in earnest in 1944.

2. World of Packaging: Plastic (Polyethylene)

You already know that plastic is used in practically everything, including toys, most of our clothes, and even most of the items in your kitchen and automobiles. Its primary use is in packagings, such as plastic bags, films, geomembranes, and containers like bottles. Do you, however, know who created them? The earliest known use of plastic was 3500 years ago. The earliest people to process natural rubber into balls, bands, and figurines were the Mesoamericans. The juice from the "Morning Glory Vine" was used to prepare the latex they had collected from the Panama Rubber Tree plant. Because it was more resilient than glass and could be used to create a wider variety of products, modern plastic first appeared during World War II when it was used for military purposes. Compound definitions can be found in our chemistry dictionary. Natural, organic substances like cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt, and, of course, crude oil are used to make plastic. However, Alexander Parkes created the first synthetic plastic, Parkesine (nitrocellulose), in Birmingham, England, in 1856. Parkes, an inventor, planned for this plastic to be applied to clothing made of fabric as a waterproof coating. While Parkes and his company fell out of business, his idea launched the plastics industry. Another plastic with a modest name, Bakelite, was developed in 1907 by American chemist Leo Baekeland. Bakelite was merely a pliable chemical compound manufactured from two additional chemicals. Later, with changes in chemical compositions, a variety of synthetic polymers have been created. Common synthetic polymers like polythene, polystyrene, and polyacrylates have carbon-carbon bonds making up their backbones, whereas polymers with carbon heteroatoms like polyamides, polyesters, polyurethanes, polysulfides, and polycarbonates have other elements (such as oxygen, sulfur, and nitrogen) inserted along with their carbon-carbon bonds. Additionally, silicon may create compounds like this without requiring carbon atoms. Then, in 1933, chemists at the now-defunct chemical company ICI devised a completely new way of producing plastic. The same waxy substance that von Pechmann had seen caught their attention as they worked on high-pressure reactions. They first had trouble duplicating the effect until they realized that oxygen had gotten into the system during the initial response. In just two years, ICI developed a workable technology for creating ordinary plastic that is probably certainly readily available to you right now.

3. LCD Screens

LCD means liquid crystal display and it is the technology of the 21st century for electronics. Amazingly, there have been designs for flat-screen color screens since the late 1960s! When the British Ministry of Defense made the decision to switch out the large and expensive cathode ray tubes in its military vehicles for flat-screen televisions. It finally decided on a liquid crystals-based concept. Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) were already known to be feasible; the issue was that they only truly functioned at high temperatures. So, unless you're sitting in an oven, not of much use. The MoD asked George Gray at the University of Hull to find a solution to make LCDs work at more comfortable (and practical) temperatures in 1970. When he created the 5CB molecule, he accomplished exactly that. 90% of LCD devices worldwide contained 5CB by the late 1970s and early 1980s, and you can still find it in items like budget watches and calculators. In the meantime, 5CB derivatives enable the existence of phones, computers, and TVs.

4. Ammonia- NH3

Early in the 20th century, the world's expanding population ran out of ammonia before it could fertilize all of its crops. Today, an estimated two billion people do not go hungry thanks to the invention of the Haber process, a method for producing ammonia in large quantities. Each year, we generate 100 million tonnes of ammonia for use as fertilizer, but it is also a key component of explosives.

Fritz Haber submitted his patent on the "synthesis of ammonia from its elements" on October 13, 1908; for this invention, he was eventually given the 1918 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Haber-Bosch process is the name given today to this reaction: Fritz Haber was the pioneer and laid the groundwork for high-pressure chemical engineering, but Carl Bosch later expanded it on an industrial scale and was recognized for it with the Nobel Prize in 1931. The ammonia production method that has been in use since then has the names of Haber and Bosch, who shared the Nobel Prize for their work. In fact, the Haber-Bosch method is thought to be the 20th century's most important invention. The Haber-Bosch process currently accounts for nearly 80% of the nitrogen in our bodies, making it the most likely contributing chemical to the population growth over the last 100 years. Therefore, it is said that this technology has saved and will likely continue to save billions of lives.