TRANSPORTING CHEMICALS – THE RISK, THE DANGER

Transporting chemicals can be a risky business to the population. This everyday task sometimes turns to be an immediate danger.

Such an incident happened in Israel last year. The sequence of events that almost ended with an accident was described in a report written by investigators of the Israeli ministry of transport. It is interesting to read and then to follow-up and check if the necessary steps have been taken to avoid such incidents in the future.

The report describes a sequence of events that took place on June 9th, after an EL-AL 747 cargo aircraft landed in Ben-Gurion airport in Tel-Aviv after an incoming flight from Belgium.
The cargo was off-loaded and stored in the cargo terminal. It included 10 metal barrels containing Acryl amid – a chemical that is being used among other things for filling spaces in construction. When this is the use, the chemical is mixed with another chemical to produce a gel.

After six hours, five of the barrels suddenly explode in the cargo terminal sending the chemical up to the ceiling which is 12 meters high. The emergency services isolated the area and an investigation began.

The investigation revealed that a “chain of mistakes” was made along the path of the shipment until it landed in Israel. In spite of the fact that it is not forbidden to ship this chemical by air.

The report recommends to check the responsibility of all the parties involved and in addition to consider a warning about the air transportation of Acrylamid until further investigations that will result in more precise instructions about the way it is stored before loaded on a plane. The report points to the lack of safety instructions that apply to the air transport of certain chemicals. It also points to the need to prepare a very exact manual that all the shipping chain will have to follow when chemicals are put on a plane.

This time, the explosion happened on the ground. The report is a warning that there are still holes in the system that is supposed to safeguard from such chemical reactions that may be the result of the conditions during a flight.

The report says that this “severe incident could have ended with an accident” and this is the red light above all the details and procedures described in the report.

Since then some steps have been taken but the involved parties should always remember that a routine job can end in a mass accident.