Work Safety Work Warning from Lanzhou Water Pollution Incident

Although the Lanzhou water pollution incident is a pollution incident, many of its refractions are worthy of our consideration. Its lessons are worth learning from. It has provided us with many inspirations for doing a safe production.

The first is to eliminate hidden dangers of accidents thoroughly. The leading group of the “4•11” local tap water benzene indicator overreaching incidents in Lanzhou City reported yesterday that, according to preliminary analysis, the surrounding underground oily wastewater was the direct cause of excessive benzene in the water in the free-flowing gully, and its production was different from that of the original Lanhua Company. There were two leakage accidents in 1987 and 2002. The pollutants in these two accidents were not dealt with in time and caused a pollution accident. If the pollutants can be recovered timely after the accident, a possible accident will not occur. Therefore, this accident has also played a good role in alerting the safety production work. It requires us to identify hidden accidents in the safety production work, and we must promptly rectify it. We must not be sloppy.

Second, resolutely eliminate the use of eliminated technology and equipment. According to a survey by the Oriental Morning Post reporter, Lanzhou Petrochemical's main drain pipe was designed by a design institute of the former Soviet Union. It has a total length of 25.88 kilometers (later extended to 26.78 kilometers) and was officially put into use in 1960. It has been in service for more than 50 years. Currently, about 70,000 cubic meters of traffic is still being discharged every day, and the pipeline was found to exceed the limit of use in 2004. In the past ten years of this extended service, Lanzhou Petrochemical had at least six serious safety incidents. In one of the explosions, the blast point was only 500 meters away from the nearest residential area, and a large water plant was about 50 meters in the vicinity. At the same time, the Lanzhou Water Plant Ziliugou was built in the 1950s as an “overdue service,” and the Lanzhou City Government sold the city’s water business at a high price to Veolia Water in 2007, but did not make any changes to the “overdue service” facilities. The laying of security risks to the city’s water supply is also an important cause of this pollution incident. The accident also reminded us once again that we must ban the use of obsolete processes and equipment and prohibit the use of outdated equipment and facilities.

The third is to strictly implement responsibilities. This pollution is of course the main responsibility of polluting companies. However, the government's supervisory responsibility cannot be overruled. If the government establishes a chain of responsibility for safe water supply, this can lead to the avoidance of excessive benzene accidents in tap water. Accidents that can be avoided have occurred. The government and relevant departments should take this incident to clarify the responsibilities of relevant departments and enterprises and prevent the recurrence of such incidents. At the same time, it also warned of safety production work, must implement the responsibility system for safety production, build responsibility safety, responsible government, and implement the main corporate responsibility and government supervision responsibility.

The fourth is to create integrity and safety. The tap water pollution in Lanzhou occurred in many places and rejected the sensitive period of the PX chemical project. People will associate this incident with the dangers of PX and other dangerous chemical projects to people and society, and they will question the safety and credibility of these projects. It will question the government's supervision over these projects and question whether the government and the company can provide reliable safety and security for the people. This urgently requires that we must create honesty and security so that the public can see an open, transparent, responsible, honest government, and a company that has social responsibility for security.

Fifth, safety production focuses on prevention. Although Lanzhou has responded quickly to this pollution incident, the lack of prior emergency measures has been “slow” even if the response is quicker. After things have been done, they will be saved. This type of “repairing sheep” type of drinking water safety is already unacceptable to the public. It is necessary for the sheep to “do not die” and make up for “immortality,” and take preventive measures beforehand to prevent accidents. From this incident, we also reminded us that in the work of safety production, we must promptly discover the signs of accidents, eliminate potential accidents, and eliminate the accidents in the bud.

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