Enlarge image
Containers on the premises of the chemical company BASF (archive photo)
Photo: Uwe Anspach / dpa
Within a few days, another chemical got into the Rhine at the world's largest chemical company, BASF, based in Ludwigshafen.
As the waterway police announced, about 100 liters of hexamethylenediamine flowed into the Rhine when the cargo of a tanker was handled.
The cause of the incident at the Group's main plant on Friday evening was presumably a technical defect on board the tanker.
The chemical is "a weakly water-polluting substance".
Prosecutors and police are investigating a water pollution, it said.
A BASF spokesman confirmed the incident on Saturday.
According to him, the tanker belongs to an outside company.
The skipper was able to stop the chemical from escaping after he noticed it.
30 kilograms of an active ingredient for pesticides had already run into the Rhine on Wednesday.
The BASF group had announced that it was the herbicide metazachlor.
Based on projections, the company is assuming a total of around 80 to 90 kilograms of metazachlor that went from the plant to a sewage treatment plant on Wednesday.
As a police spokesman said on request on Saturday, both events happened independently.
jso / dpa