Of the 400 chemical firms and other companies handling hazardous substances in the Netherlands over half have broken safety rules in the last two years, the Volkskrant reported on Thursday

The paper conducted its own investigation based on inspection reports of what the government calls ‘major risk companies’, such as (petro)chemical companies.

Without counting relatively minor infringements of the rules, one fifth to a quarter of the companies have committed serious to very serious breaches of safety, the Volkskrant found.

At at least five companies production had to be halted because of a possibility of a serious accident.

In 2015, a valve left open caused a spill of 27.7 tonnes of toxic ethylene oxide at an installation at Shell Moerdijk while last year 2,730 kilos of the carcinogenic substance formaldehyde ended up in the environment at chemical company DuPont in Utrecht.

Growth

According to Genserik Reniers, professor of safety of hazardous substances at Delft University, safety is an ongoing issue in many companies. ‘Companies often wrongly think that safety rules will hamper production growth. Nothing could be further from the truth. Safety and production growth go hand in hand,’ he told the paper.

But according to professor of safety management Ira Helsloot the inspection reports don’t reflect the true safety situation at the companies. ‘Many infringements are to do with superfluous rules and paperwork,’ the paper quotes him as saying.

‘But there are definitely lots of companies with small profit margins, such as storage and transport companies and chemical waste companies, which are cutting corners and hiding it well. They are the Chemie-Packs of today,’ he added.