The devastating explosion in Beirut should be a wake-up call for countries on the dangers of ammonium nitrate, which caused the blast, experts say. BeirutExplosions BeirutBlasts
Lebanese authorities said 2,750 tonnes of the industrial chemical had been stored for six years at Beirut port without safety measures.
"Beirut, like Texas, is a wake-up call. We should learn from these catastrophes and make sure they don't happen again," said Stewart Walker, of the school of Forensic, Environmental and Analytical Chemistry at Flinders University in Adelaide. Anger has been mounting in Lebanon at the authorities for allowing huge quantities of the chemical to be stored near a residential area for years in unsafe conditions.
Global data on storage is spotty, said Hans Reuvers, a German-based expert on ammonium nitrate and fertiliser technology and executive committee member at the Ammonium Nitrate/Nitric Acid Producers Study Group .
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