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The use of chemicals and chemical safety are of great concern in the world recently because many chemical explosions and leaks happened. Binh Dinh Newspaper’s reporter Viet Hien spoke with Le Bach Chuc, consultant of environment protection and chemical safety center under Vietnam Institute of Industrial Chemistry about the issue.
* What is the aim of the enhancement of awareness about chemical safety?
Chemicals play an important role in our life. Statistics proved that there are about known 5-7 million chemical substances, over 80,000 used in all activities, and over 1,000 newly found and produced annually.
A good management of chemicals will bring practical benefits to people. There were many serious disasters relating to chemicals in the human being’s history. Enhancing the awareness about chemical safety is, therefore, a target that needs focusing on.
* What are possible dangers from chemicals?
Chemical can badly affect the people’s health. There are nine dangerous chemical groups, including dynamite, gas, inflammable liquid, inflammable solid, radioactive substance, and other substances.
They are able to affect body parts, such as head, nose, eyes, chest, stomach, liver, and nervous system, causing chronic or acute effects.
Acute effects, for example, involve such symptoms as headache, nausea, and faint. Chronic effects only show after many years, causing damage to internal organs.
Also, chemicals pollute the air, kill trees, create acid rain, and badly affect the wildlife. Water, particularly underground water, can be polluted by chemicals.
* Environment protection and chemical safety center plans to aid Binh Dinh with chemical safety project. Could you brief on the project?
We are going to help Strengthening Environmental Management and Land Administration (SEMLA) in Binh Dinh to carry out the project of “investigating, evaluating chemical use and management, building data and raise awareness about chemical safety”.
It aims to set up the data on chemical safety in Binh Dinh, raising awareness about the chemical safety.
Its scale including list of dangerous chemicals, list of plant protection drugs restricted from use or banned from use in Vietnam, and other lists. The project targets all enterprises using, storing or distributing chemical in Binh Dinh.
We cooperated with provincial Department of Environment and Natural Resources to hold a training course on chemical safety.
Participants were provided with the information about methods to investigate and evaluate the chemical use.
I hope that the project will be soon carried out in Binh Dinh.
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