Valjee, if you read your own quote carefully, you will see that there is a number of key points which serve to starkly illustrate the difference between remote regions, and modern cities throughout the western world (and most of the rest of the world, for that matter).
You pointed, very correctly, to China. But, in China, they have already taken action in Shandong province, which is near the coast, by shutting down many of the small graphite operations. Did you notice the name of the province where the graphite rain, and hydrochloric acid contamination is occurring? It's Heilongjiang, way out in Western China, on the edge of the Gobi desert, 1700 kilometres from Beijing. It's precisely because the local authorities there (for whatever reason) have not been enforcing environmental restrictions that companies have been able to get away with tipping untreated residues into the rivers, and to release graphite particles into the atmosphere.
Are you seriously trying to suggest that, because this has happened in remote western China, that it is happening, or will happen in the US? That's so far from reality as to be hardly worth discussing.
My point is that large quantities of a wide range of acids are routinely used, safely, in industrial operations in almost every western country. If you talk to an economist, he will tell you that sulphuric acid, for example, is so important, and its industrial use so widespread, that its consumption has been used as a measure of industrial activity in a country. But even with such a huge consumption, industrial accidents involving such products are quite rare - because controls are in place, and they work. The idea that, after a couple of hundred years of operation, the chemical industry has not learned how to handle such products is, frankly, nonsensical.
If the naive and the ignorant want to get their information from greasepaint-splattered faces in horror movies, then so be it. But let's not confuse such childish rubbish with any sort of serious discussion about our investments.
Cheers,
Prime1
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