Chimie Hebdo: Fertilizers too high in ammonium nitrates on French market?

Although the cause of the Toulouse explosion remains unknown, there is much debate in France about the safety of ammonium nitrate fertilizers. The Barthelemy report proposed replacing products containing 33.5% nitrogen with ones containing 28-31.5% nitrogen but Unifa (the French fertilizer industry's union) is in favour of retaining high nitrogen content products but improving safety standards for storage and distribution. In 2000-2001 French farmers used 2.4 M tonnes high nitrogen content fertilizers and 800,000 tonnes medium nitrogen content products. The also used 2 M tonnes/ nitrogenated solutions and 1.5 M tonnes compound fertilizers containing ammonium nitrate. 77% of …