Rapid growth triggers environmental accidents

BEIJING - China is suffering from an increasing number of environmental accidents, mainly triggered by the rapid growth of the chemical industry in the wake of urbanization, a senior environmental official said.

Last year, 542 environmental accidents were handled across the country, statistics from the Ministry of Environmental Protection showed.

"At present, nearly 60 percent of such accidents were triggered by traffic accidents and safety accidents in the process of production," Ling Jiang, deputy director of the department of pollution prevention and control under the Ministry of Environmental Protection, told China Daily on Monday.