The Karachi city government Saturday approached the port and other governments at the metropolis and searched information concerning the storage of Ammonium Nitrate following gigantic Beirut explosions that murdered 150 individuals and wounded tens of others.

Commissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shallwani, in this respect, has written letters to the Deputy Commissioner of the District East, West, South, Malir, Central, Korangi, West and East; chairman Korangi Association of Trade and Industry; chairman of Landhi Association of Trade and Industry; chairman Federal B Area Association of Trade and Industry; chairman North Karachi Association of Trade and Industry and chairman Bin Qasim Association of Trade and Industry and requested them to submit details of storage of Ammonium nitrate and other poisonous dual-use precursor substances lying together.

The commissioner has asked them to provide information to his workplace at the oldest.

The commissioner has asked for the title of business, mill or business and title of the proprietor, in addition to the number of ammonium nitrate or other poisonous dual-use precursor compound, their span of storage and specifics of security steps.

The correspondence was composed in the aftermath of gigantic explosions in Beirut which rocked its capital town Lebanon. It’s thought that two,750 metric tons of volatile ammonium nitrate stored in a warehouse led to the explosion.

Why ammonium nitrate is harmful

When coupled with gas oils, ammonium nitrate makes a potent volatile widely utilized in the building business, but also by insurgent groups like the Taliban for improvised explosives.

But under ordinary storage requirements and without very large heat, it’s hard to provoke ammonium nitrate, Jimmie Oxley, a chemistry professor at the University of Rhode Island, told AFP.

“If you examine the movie (of this Beirut burst ), you noticed that the black smoke, you noticed the red smoke — which was an incomplete response,” she explained.

“I’m assuming there was a little explosion which instigated the response of this ammonium nitrate — if that little explosion was an accident or some thing on purpose I have not discovered yet.”

This is since ammonium nitrate is an oxidizer — it hastens gas and enables other substances to spark more easily, but isn’t itself very caustic.

For all these reasons, there are normally quite strict rules regarding where it could be saved: for instance, it has to be stored off from fuels and sources of heat.

In reality, many nations in the European Union need that calcium carbonate to be inserted to ammonium nitrate to make calcium ammonium nitrate, which can be safer.

In the USA, regulations were revised significantly following the Oklahoma City attack.

Beneath the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards, as an instance, facilities that store over two,000 lbs (900 kilograms) of ammonium nitrate are subject to inspections.

Despite its risks, Oxley said valid uses of ammonium nitrate in construction and agriculture have made it crucial.

“We would not have this contemporary world without explosives, and also we would not feed the people we have now without ammonium nitrate fertilizer,” she explained.

“We want ammonium nitratewe simply have to pay decent attention to what we are doing .”