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International Clearing House for Major Chemical Inidents
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This policy document has been written primarily to give policy makers at national and regional level a broad understanding of the problems posed to the health of people and populations, as well as the environment, when a chemical incident occurs and chemicals are released into the environment. Often, the release will have occurred at a specific site - the incident scene. For this sort of release, the emergency services become involved and, by and large throughout the world, are well prepared, trained, and organised to cope with the release itself. They put out any fires, try to contain any liquid chemicals and rescue casualties. The chemicals, however, are often dispersed, into the air, onto the soil, or into the water etc.
In other sorts of incidents, the chemical is released into food or water. Occasionally, the release is silent and is only announced by an increase in symptoms or illness. In these cases, there is no scene, the emergency services are not involved, and it is other services, such as water authorities that become involved.
What is rarely addressed, though, is the impact that the release of the chemical (and any containment or clean-up processes) has on the health- both the short term and the long term - of individuals and the public, and what difference there might have been to the health of the people if different courses of action had been taken by the emergency responders.
A WHO Collaborating Centre - Organizational Body
FirSt Edition
1-902724-10-0
NONE
Management
English
1999
1-118
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