Word: plants
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...freighter anchored in the harbor of this port town on Galveston Bay. The Grand Camp carried 1,400 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. At 8 the next morning, the Grand Camp exploded in a blast that rattled windows 150 miles away. Flames leaped 700 ft. to a nearby Monsanto plant that produced styrene, a combustible ingredient of synthetic rubber. Minutes later the Monsanto plant exploded, setting off fires throughout the city. On April 17 the freighter High Flyer, also loaded with nitrates, exploded in the harbor. The toll: 576 dead, 2,000 seriously injured...
...Middleport, N.Y., a small community northeast of Buffalo, elementary schoolchildren huddle over their notebooks, just 400 yards from a pesticide factory operated by the FMC Corp. A month ago a faulty pump at the neighboring plant spewed out methyl isocyanate gas, the same substance that was stored at Bhopal, India, where more than 2,500 people died last week. Firemen evacuated the 600 youngsters from the school, and 30 of them were treated for eye irritations...
...dangers. Those hazards can be divided into two rough categories: primary and secondary disasters. Primary disasters are the quick explosions, fires or leaks that strike with the surprise of a hurricane, killing instantly and widely. The tragedy last week at Bhopal, when deadly gas escaped from a Union Carbide plant, was of the primary variety. Such violent, large-scale tragedies are dramatic and terrible, but extremely rare, particularly in developed nations like the U.S. The occasional deaths that do occur in those mishaps are almost always confined to employees who were on-site at the time. "There...
...another example of a primary mishap in North America, plumes of noxious malathion last October wafted from an American Cyanamid pesticide plant in New Jersey to cover most of Staten Island, N.Y. About 150 people were treated after inhaling the fumes...
Western Europe also has its share of potential disasters. That lesson was made clear eight years ago, when a chemical reaction at a plant in Seveso, outside Milan, Italy, set off a mild explosion, discharging a cloud of between 1 lb. and 22 lbs. of poisonous dioxin into the atmosphere. Since then, 10 million cu. ft. of contaminated earth has been buried in large pits and covered with clay, plastic sheets and cement. Newly seeded grass masks any signs of the event. Although no one died because of the mishap, it remains to be seen whether the local cancer rate...