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Developed by the World Health Organization, United Kingdom Health Protection Agency and partners

Disaster Risk Management for Health

CHEMICAL SAFETY 

Disaster Risk Management for Health Fact Sheets Global Platform - May 2011

Why is this important?

A chemical incident is the unexpected release of asubstance that is (potentially) hazardous either to hu-mans, other animals or the environment.

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Chemical releases arise from technological incidents,impact of natural hazards

4, and from conflict and terror-

ism.5

The International Federation of the Red Cross has es-

timated that between 1998 and 2007, there werenearly 3 200 technological disasters, including chemi-cal incidents, with approximately 100 000 people killedand nearly 2 million people affected.

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The management of chemical incidents requires a mul-ti-disciplinary and multi-sectoral approach - the health sector may play a supporting or a leadership role atvarious stages of the management.

 

• Prevention of chemical emergencies in-cludes:

o safe location of chemical facilitiesaway from residential areas

o reducing the amount of storedtoxic and flammable chemicals

o building in technical controls and

redundancy to provide safe use ofchemicals and management ofwaste.

• Preparation for a chemical release in-cludes:

o scenario analyses and impact as-sessment

o planning for, training and exercis-ing the response, including theinstallation of a public warningsystem,

o training and equipping responders

to deal with loss of containment.• Detection and alert includes the develop-

ment of systems to recognize chemicalevents as early as possible and scalingup an appropriate incident response.

• Response includes the containment of thechemical release, decontamination, man-agement of health consequences and riskassessment.

• Recovery includes activities such as riskand impact assessment in order to design

care, remediation and protective actions,clean-up and investigation of the rootcause to prevent recurrence.

Key Points 

What are the health risks?

Chemical incidents can cause injury through four basicinjury mechanisms which can also be strongly interre-lated:

•  Fire produces injuries through heat and expo-sure to toxic substances (including combustionproducts).

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•  Explosion produces traumatic (mechanical)injuries through the resulting shockwave(blast), fragments and projectiles.

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  Toxicity may result when humans come intocontact with a chemical released from its con-tainment, be it from storage or transport, or asreaction or combustion products. Toxicity cancause harm by a wide array of toxic mecha-nisms ranging from chemical burns toasphyxiation and neurotoxicity.

•  Mental health effects are not only determinedby exposure to the chemical, fire or explosionbut also by “exposure to the event” itself.

Severe incidents have the potential to disrupt the livesof casualties through injury, loss of relatives, propertyor employment and societal disruption.

ExamplesIndia (1984) & France (2001)

On 3 December 1984, over 40 tons of methyl  isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, immediately killing at least 3,800 people and causing significant morbidity and premature death for many thousands more.

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A huge explosion ripped through AZF (Azote de France)ammonium nitrate fertiliser factory in an industrial zone on 

the outskirts of Toulouse, France on 21 September 2001.Thirty-one people died in the event and approximately 2500 were injured. More than 500 homes became uninhabitable.

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