Ammonium nitrate: fertiliser behind many industrial accidents
A crane loads Calcium, Ammonium Nitrate fertiliser from a ship onto a truck at the Port of Mombasa. In agriculture, ammonium nitrate fertiliser is applied in granule form and quickly dissolves under moisture.
When combined with fuel oils, ammonium nitrate creates a potent explosive widely used by the construction industry.
Ammonium nitrate, which Lebanese authorities have said was the cause of the Beirut blast, is an odorless crystalline substance commonly used as a fertilizer that has been the cause of numerous industrial explosions over the decades.
These include notably at a Texas fertilizer plant in 2013 that killed 15 and was ruled deliberate, and another at a chemical plant in Toulouse, France in 2001 that killed 31 people but was accidental.
