For example, the Colombian authorities were issuing authorizations for individual transactions of butyl acetate, ethyl acetate, isopropyl acetate, hexane solvent no. 1 and 2, chloroform, methanol, diacetone alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, butanol thinner, sodium carbonate, ammonia and manganese dioxide.

Since then, there had been only one attempt, in 1995, by a Finnish Company, Kokkola Chemicals OY, to export a consignment of hazardous material, in this case containing cupric arsenite, to a South African company, JAD Metal Concentrators (Pty.) Ltd. The incident provoked such an outcry from Green movements that the import was stopped and the waste was sent back to Finland.

At the Mayak Industrial Reprocessing Complex in Russia s southern Urals, a storage tank holding nitrate acetate salts exploded in 1957, releasing a massive amount of radioactive material over 20,000 square kilometers, forcing the evacuation of 272,000 people. In September 1994, an explosion at Indonesia s Serpong research reactor was triggered by the ignition of methane gas that had seeped from a storage room and exploded when a worker lit a cigarette.