ANOTHER CHEMICAL DISASTER LOOMS IN EASTERN UKRAINE

Another chemical disaster looms in Eastern Ukraine

A whole host of experts on eastern Europe have lined up to warn that the conflict in the eastern Ukraine could spark a widespread chemical disaster if industrial storage units of chlorine gas are damaged and the contents released into the environment.

The threat is not just hypothetical. On February 24 a stray artillery shell hit the Donetsk Filter Station’s chlorine gas depot, which stores around 7,000kg of the gas.

Fortunately, none of the storage units were damaged.

Before conflict broke out in the area three years ago the Donbass region in the country was home to 5,300 operational industrial enterprises, although not all of those will have been processing hazardous materials.

Robert Amsterdam, Russian political expert and lawyer at international law firm Amsterdam & Partners, said: “If one of those uncontrolled sites containing chemicals were to detonate, tens of thousands of people could be poisoned. It is a potential disaster on the scale of Chernobyl.”

Rudy Richardson, Professor of toxicology at the University of Michigan backed up that view. He said: “In a situation like this, where a war zone is near a concentration of industrial facilities where toxic and explosive chemicals are manufactured and stored, it is possible that massive releases of toxic chemicals could be released.

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Data: 21.03.2017
Fonte: www.express.co.uk