Accidents Environment Agency

Huff J. E., Int. Symp. Preventing Major Chem. Accid., Washington, D.C., pp. 4.43-4.68, sponsored by Cent. Chem. Process Saf. Am. Inst. Chem. Eng., U.S. Environ. Agency and World Bank (1987). 

Figure 6.5. Summary of accident data from an Environment Agency research project in 1996 (based on 31 incidents)...

On the reaetive side, the Environment Agency maintains a database of information on health and safety information relating to its staff, contractors and the public. The purpose of the database is to ensure that accident records (including near misses) are investigated and lessons are learnt thereby improving the Agency s ability to examine why incidents occur and provide better protection and a safer working environment. Unfortunately, the database had not been operational for sufficient duration to make use of the data. 

NISA was therefore seen as a key factor in the failure to prevent the accident. In August 2011 it was announced that the Japanese government intended to bring NISA under the Environment Agency, which was seen as relatively untainted by close ties with the nuclear industry and therefore better able to regulate in a hands-off manner. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency concentrates on modeling the dispersion of toxic material in the environment and the health effects thereof rather than accident prevention, The... 

IAEA, Principles and Techniques for Post-Accident Assessment and Recovery in a Contaminated Environment of a Nuclear Facility, Safety Series 97, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 1989. 

Decision-makers have sometimes found presentations of comparative risk information a useful aid to the public discourse on risk acceptance. We referred in the last section, for example, to OSHA s use of statistics on the risks of job-related accidents to support decisions on risk reduction goals for workplace carcinogens. The agency noted that lifetime risks of death from injuries suffered in what most people perceive to be safe occupations do not go below about 1 per 1000. Data of these types were helpful in explaining why the agency settled on carcinogen risk levels in this range as sufficiently low to provide a safe work environment. 

The national bodies involved in the assessment of the risk from chemical accidents are the National Institute for Public Health (ISS) the National Institute for workers safety (ISPESL) and the National Agency for the Protection of the Environment. The last agency prepares periodic scientific reports on the risk from chemical accidents in Italy and maintains the database on industrial accidents on behalf of the Ministry of the environment that holds the inventory of the plants at risk of chemical accidents. 

A project of the Ministry of the Environment, the agency for the protection of the environment and the Fire Brigades in under development to provide a common database on accidents compatible with MARS. Results of a pilot phase show the importance of this initiative, since it aims at reducing duplicate efforts and is toward the international harmonization of adequate tools for planning preventing activities. 

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