Chapter 1043 Chemical Safety

An important factor limiting agricultural development in East Africa is the fertility problem of East African land. There is no shortage of relatively fertile land in East Africa, such as the volcanic ash soil distribution area in the northern East African Plateau (mainly Kenya), the Great Lakes area with excellent water and soil conditions, and the black soil of Mozambique. distribution area, etc.

However, there are many relatively barren lands in East Africa, especially in tropical rain forests or desert areas, so improving soil fertility requires the participation of the fertilizer industry.

Fortunately, during the First Five-Year Plan, the pesticide and fertilizer industry framework in East Africa has been basically completed. During the Second Five-Year Plan, the chemical industry will receive greater support as a weak link in East Africa's basic industries.

The chemical industry is not only related to agriculture-related fields such as pesticides and fertilizers, but also involves the national defense industry. Many chemical products are naturally explosives, or are used in other production links of the national defense industry. Therefore, the chemical industry occupies an important position in East Africa's Second Five-Year Plan. , whether it is for agriculture, light, heavy industry, or chemical industry, it is extremely important.

Of course, East Africa has many shortcomings in the chemical industry compared with countries such as Germany, but it depends on how to distinguish it. The petroleum industry in East Africa should actually also belong to a category of chemical industry, but because East Africa attaches great importance to petroleum, it is distinguished separately. For management, East Africa's petroleum industry is already quite developed, which also means that East Africa occupies a dominant position in the petrochemical industry. Similarly, the rubber industry is also closely related to the chemical industry, so the true level of East Africa's chemical industry still needs to be verified.

Of course, Ernst will not play a big role in the development of East Africa's chemical industry for the time being. He is very unfamiliar with this field. It is already quite rare to elevate the chemical industry to a strategic position in East Africa's domestic industrial development.

For countries with a planned economic system like East Africa, it is easiest to achieve results when they focus on developing a certain field. Therefore, as long as there are no major problems in the direction, with the development of the Second Five-Year Plan, the chemical industry in East Africa will obviously be better. Progress was even greater during the First Five-Year Plan period.

Returning to the topic, Ernst said to Fingel: "The Ministry of Agriculture can do a lot of work, such as meteorological research, agricultural structure, breeding of fine varieties, land improvement and management, etc. Don't just focus on agricultural machinery and fertilizers, pesticide production , Without the industrial base reaching a certain level, these things cannot be created out of thin air. As the Second Five-Year Plan advances, there will always be some development, so don’t be too anxious.”

In increasing agricultural output, chemical fertilizers and pesticides have the most significant effects, but other methods are not completely ineffective. It is just that without increasing chemical fertilizers, the amount of pesticides used is more likely to produce results.

Moreover, as a veteran, Ernst knows the importance of pesticides and fertilizers, but the sustainable development of agriculture is also essential.

"Fertilizers and pesticides, especially the production of pesticides, must be cautious. The safety of many pesticides is not clear, so we cannot completely rely on the protective effect of pesticides on crops. Harmless to agricultural products does not mean harmless to the human body and harmless to the ecology," said To put it bluntly, some pesticides are poisons if not handled properly. If water sources are polluted on a large scale, the consequences for the soil will be disastrous!"

At this point, Ernst himself broke into a sweat. It seemed that he had not paid attention to the issue of chemical industry production safety for a long time.

A large number of chemical plants were built in East Africa during the First Five-Year Plan. These chemical plants may not be free of potential safety hazards. It seems that the relevant departments will be specifically mentioned later to ask them to conduct a major screening of the chemical industry in East Africa.

Safety hazards in the chemical industry are no joke. In previous lives, both the United States and India had serious chemical disasters, especially the poison gas leak in Bhopal, India. The casualties were so great that they were even included in history textbooks.

The Bhopal poison gas incident in India caused at least 25,000 direct deaths, 550,000 indirect deaths, and more than 200,000 permanent disabilities. It was worse than the abnormally high temperatures in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Bhopal poison gas incident was caused by a US-invested pesticide factory in India in the previous life. If a disaster of this scale broke out in East Africa, it would be almost equivalent to the death of the entire population of Dar es Salaam. After all, Dar es Salaam The city's total population is only over 800,000.

And who can be sure how much India and the United States covered up the Bhopal gas incident in the previous life. The apparent disability and death of more than 700,000 people was enough to shock the world. At that time, the Soviet Union, the bitter enemy of the United States, was still alive, and The Bhopal gas incident is closely related to the United States.

The more I think about Ernst, the more horrifying I feel. The world's chemical industry is currently at a relatively rough stage of development, and even East Africa is no exception. After all, human beings' knowledge of chemical substances is far from insufficient, so a comprehensive survey of the national chemical industry has been carried out. A directional survey is necessary.

Later, after Ernst ended the dialogue with the Ministry of Agriculture, he approached the chemical industry management department for a talk.

Ernst said bluntly: "The development of the chemical industry cannot be careless. Some chemicals have potential hazards such as toxicity and explosion. Therefore, chemical industry production safety is an important part of the development of the chemical industry during the Second Five-Year Plan, including the layout of the chemical industry. You also We need to check for deficiencies in the original plan and correct the unreasonable layout of some chemical plants in a timely manner.”

Regarding what Ernst said, the industrial department did not immediately agree, but said: "Your Highness, the problem is that some of our projects have already started construction. If we start over, the losses will be too great."

Ernst was naturally aware of this, and he said: "For the projects that have already started construction, let's proceed according to the plan for the time being! However, we need to improve the construction standards, formulate strict production processes, and handle the waste properly."

The Second Five-Year Plan has begun to be implemented, and some projects have even been under construction since the end of the First Five-Year Plan, and the projects are half completed. It is naturally impossible to overturn all of them at this time, so we can only take a delaying tactic and wait for a few years to solve these potential hidden dangers through industrial technology upgrades.

Since we are discussing the issue of production safety rectification in the chemical industry, other industrial sectors are naturally indispensable.

Ernst emphasized: "In the past, we were used to using black laborers to perform some risky work in engineering construction, but this is not feasible in the industrial field. After all, these black laborers have no professional qualities and may cause serious problems in the production process."

After all, why the previous Bhopal gas incident happened in India has a lot to do with the quality of Indian employees. According to Ernst's understanding of Indians, they are more perfunctory, especially at the military level. They crash planes and sink ships at every turn. If it were a normal country, they should be ashamed.

After all, if the military, a department that should pay the most attention to discipline and rules and regulations, can fool around, other industries and government departments in India are certainly not much better, so it is completely reasonable for the Bhopal gas incident to happen in India.

Although East African blacks are not Indians, in this era, their understanding of things is probably not as good as that of Indians. Indians have seen a lot of the world under British rule, while East African blacks have only been working as slaves for East Africa for a few decades.

"Of course, in addition to black laborers, we must also strengthen safety education for our people, strengthen production training, formulate and supervise the implementation of rules and regulations. Production safety is no small matter, especially in the chemical industry and some industries with certain risks."

In Ernst's endless education, the East African industrial sector discussed and studied the issue of "production safety", which also meant that during the Second Five-Year Plan, the work of the government and enterprises was further increased. However, this did make East Africa tighten the rough development of industry in the new round of industrial development.