University laboratories are frequent visitors, and you need to be vigilant about the safety risks of online shopping of hazardous chemicals
How to solve the contradiction between continuous upgrading of management and control and reasonable needs such as experiments
Our reporters Qin Huajiang and Lu Huadong
"Some reagent companies on the Internet will sell them, but they won't put them on the bright side." In recent years, the supervision of hazardous chemicals has become more and more strict, and some unscrupulous merchants, driven by huge profits, mistakenly believe that "business opportunities are coming", and hide themselves on the Internet to engage in illegal transactions .
Among the buyers of these hazardous chemicals, there are laboratories and reagent manufacturers in colleges and universities, as well as biological companies and metallurgical companies.
They have repeatedly ordered small quantities of hazardous chemicals from the Internet, and some websites are still full of various transaction information.
Xinhua Daily Telegraph reporter found that due to the increasing difficulty of purchasing through formal channels and the continuous emergence of new demands, some lawbreakers have been tempted to take risks.
And solving the contradiction between the control of hazardous chemicals and normal rigid needs is an important way to eliminate such chaos.
Hazardous chemicals are frequently sold online, and university laboratories have become frequent visitors
"Do you want more? I can sell it to you if you want less." "You will get unexpected results by consulting customer service directly. It seems to be packed in 250g." "I bought 10g, and the invoice is not easy to deal with." The reporter opened a chemical On the website, it was found that buyers and sellers exchanged "experience" on purchasing related hazardous chemicals through messages.
Some apps are also full of information on the sale and purchase of small quantities of hazardous chemicals.
A Ph.D student in a science and engineering university in the central and southern regions admitted that he searched the contact information on the academic exchange app, and spent 5,000 yuan to buy 1,000g of sodium azide.
Sodium azide is toxic, if inhaled, orally or absorbed through the skin, it can cause poisoning and death.
At the same time, sodium azide is also explosive. There have been two explosions in a university laboratory due to the careless use of sodium azide.
Offshore darknet platforms are another trading venue.
"The names of various types of hazardous chemicals mentioned in darknet transactions are all referred to in coded language, which are extremely concealed and deceptive," said Kong Lingju, deputy director of the Changzhou City Public Security Bureau in Jiangsu Province.
Recently, the People's Procuratorate of Xinbei District, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province prosecuted two cases involving the illegal sale of explosive and highly toxic chemicals.
Defendant Wang has been engaged in the chemical industry for many years. In order to make more money, he advertised on Baidu Tieba, and left his QQ contact information, and gradually built a sales network.
In order to meet the needs of some customers to buy ammonium nitrate, she went online to inquire, and found a channel to buy ammonium nitrate through the e-commerce platform, and made a profit from it.
The reporter sorted out the case and found that the buyers were not only metallurgical, biological and other enterprises, but also comprehensive, science and engineering and medical university laboratories.
A doctoral supervisor in a comprehensive university said that sodium azide is a good chemical reaction reagent in drug synthesis.
In June 2019, they did not buy it in the university reagent supply room. It happened that one of his students needed sodium azide for an experiment, so he asked the student to try to buy it.
Later, this batch of sodium azide purchased online was placed in the laboratory of the School of Pharmacy for all students to share.
The prosecutor handling the case reminded that although the single batch of dangerous chemicals illegally sold on the Internet is small, the accumulated amount is large over time, and there are great security risks.
Taking the defendant Wang as an example, from March 2019 to June 2020, she successively purchased a total of 1215.5 kg of ammonium nitrate, all of which were sold externally.
At present, Wang and other criminals have violated the "Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China" for illegally buying and selling explosives and dangerous substances, and have been prosecuted by the Xinbei District People's Procuratorate.
It is difficult to purchase through formal channels, and underground production and sales store huge profits
The reporter's investigation found that ammonium nitrate and sodium azide could be freely traded several years ago. After the Tianjin Port explosion, the state issued relevant policies and the control continued to be upgraded.
It is understood that the conditions for the public security organs to issue ammonium nitrate licenses are to submit the business license, production process and safety assessment report of the process with the applicant as the unit.
Relevant entities also need to provide certification materials that meet security standards, including physical defense such as special warehouses and explosion-proof cabinets, personnel defenses such as trained warehouse managers and full-time security personnel, and technical defense devices such as surveillance cameras and one-key intrusion alarms.
If the above conditions and supporting materials are complete, the application will generally take 20 days to complete.
A legal representative of a trading company said frankly that the cooperative manufacturers had reported to him that ammonium nitrate could not be bought anywhere.
Another defendant in the aforementioned case, Li Moumou, said that some major customers had failed to buy ammonium nitrate for a long time, so he asked him to help inquire about the source of the goods.
"I know that it is very troublesome to buy through formal channels, so I have a crooked mind. My original intention is not to make money by trading ammonium nitrate, just to maintain customers."
Multiple batches of small quantities are another difficulty in demand.
Respondents reported that most of the enterprises that consume hazardous chemicals in large quantities are qualified and have stable supply channels. However, many university laboratories, biological companies and other small and multiple batches of users sometimes have difficulty meeting their needs in a timely manner.
The aforementioned Ph.D. student at a science and technology university in the central and southern regions said that the reagents needed in the laboratory are usually purchased from a fixed unit, but sometimes they are urgently needed, and the supplier is out of stock.
A company under a university is mainly engaged in the research and development, production and sales of reagents.
In April 2020, the company found that adding sodium azide to the reagent could improve the extraction efficiency. Due to the urgency of time, it was illegally purchased online without a complicated approval process.
Driven by huge profits, an illegal industrial chain has been formed.
A middle school chemistry teacher and his son started a pharmaceutical business.
In order to subsidize research and development expenses, they produce large quantities of sodium azide, which are illegally sold to various laboratories and pharmaceutical companies.
Some merchants revealed that from the perspective of the circulation side, buying 100 grams of sodium azide through illegal logistics channels only cost more than 2,000 yuan, while the cost of regular channels is higher, and the shipping cost is nearly 10,000 yuan each time.
From the perspective of tax payment, since buyers and sellers are well aware of the illegality of underground transactions, there is no invoice in the whole process, and there is a risk of tax loss.
Judging from the choice of courier companies, they generally mail through unknown and lax inspection companies, which can not only reduce costs, but also avoid censorship.
Blocking and dredging combined with eliminating hidden dangers, comprehensively implementing policies and strong popularization methods
Many respondents believed that in response to the new trend of illegal trading of hazardous chemicals, it is necessary to cooperate with multiple departments to crack down on illegal online production and sales, unblock purchasing channels, increase efforts to popularize the law, and keep the bottom line of safety combined with blocking and dredging.
In view of the huge potential safety hazards of explosive and highly toxic chemicals, experts suggest strengthening delivery safety supervision.
Improve the comprehensive crackdown mechanism against illegal production entities, express delivery companies and intermediaries, and establish a blacklist system for the illegal production, circulation, sales and purchase of hazardous chemicals to increase their illegal costs.
At the same time, more attention should be paid to collecting relevant information on various platforms and the dark web for precise strikes.
Ji Xiaoming, deputy general manager of Zhenjiang Power Supply Company, suggested that the three departments of industry and information, power supply and postal service can strengthen cooperation to form a joint supervision force, and use the big data of electricity consumption and logistics to lock the production situation and sales trends of hazardous chemicals in special enterprises.
At the same time, the incentives and punishments for express logistics companies will be increased, and they will be encouraged to provide clues for dangerous chemicals transactions.
In many university laboratories, metallurgical enterprises, biological companies, and chemical companies, small batches of hazardous chemicals are just normal needs. If they cannot be bought through formal channels, it is easy to buy them from partial and secret doors by chance.
Many college teachers and students said that many laboratories will use chemicals more or less, and some new experiments even require new chemical products, and the experiment time is relatively tight. It is hoped that relevant departments can increase the supply of large and small batches of chemicals as soon as possible. , establish a whitelist database of relevant suppliers, and build a more reliable and convenient purchasing platform.
Liu Min, a full-time member of the Procuratorial Committee of the New Taipei District People's Procuratorate, suggested that for such needs, on the one hand, a new regulatory model should be tailored to meet the needs of relevant subjects as quickly as possible; Enhance service awareness, and implement "bulk purchases and small-batch distribution" in some areas where industries are relatively concentrated to ensure that relevant transactions are carried out under the sun.
Oriented legal popularization work also needs to be further strengthened.
The defendant, Li Moumou, was a minor in making ammonium nitrate. He also won the provincial Olympic championship. His motivation for making dangerous chemicals was to resell some money for his girlfriend's consumption; a college student involved in the case, although he heard that he bought azide Sodium needs to be reported, but it is not clear what the report means.
A number of prosecutors involved in handling the case suggested that, in addition to carrying out legal popularization propaganda aimed at general groups, targeted legal popularization education should also be carried out targeting chemical production entities, metallurgical manufacturing enterprises, reagent manufacturers, and teachers and students of chemical engineering majors in colleges and universities.