Chemical Disaster

What is Chemical Disaster?

Chemical disasters are occurrence of emission, fire or explosion involving one or

more hazardous chemicals in the course of industrial activity (handling), storage or
transportation or due to natural events leading to serious effects inside or outside the
installation likely to cause loss of life and property including adverse effects on
the environment Industrial disasters are disasters caused by chemical, mechanical, civil,
electrical or other process failures due to accident, negligence or incompetence, in an
industrial plant which may spill over to the areas outside the plant or with in causing damage
to life , property and environment

Industrial Disaster

Industrial disasters are disasters caused by chemical, mechanical, civil, electrical or other
process failures due to accident, negligence or incompetence, in an industrial plant which
may spill over to the areas outside the plant or with in causing damage to life , property and
environment .
Causes of Chemical Disasters
 Industrial (chemical) hazards are threats to people and life-support systems that arise from the
mass production of goods and services. When these threats exceed human coping capabilities
or the absorptive capacities of environmental systems they give rise to industrial
disasters. Industrial hazards can occur at any stage in the production process, including
extraction, processing, manufacture, transportation, storage, use, and disposal. Losses
generally involve the release of damaging substances (e.g. chemicals, radioactivity, genetic
materials) or damaging levels of energy from industrial facilities or equipment into
surrounding environments. This usually occurs in the form of explosions, fires, spills, leaks,
or wastes. Releases may occur because of factors that are internal to the industrial system
(e.g. engineering flaws) or they may occur because of external factors (e.g. extremes of
nature). Releases may be sudden and intensive, as in a power-plant explosion, or gradual and
extensive, as in the build-up of ozone-destroying chemicals in the stratosphere or the
progressive leakage of improperly disposed toxic wastes.

 The causes of industrial hazards and disasters are malfunctions, failures, or unanticipated
side-effects of technological systems. But this is a misleading oversimplification and many
other factors are involved.
 The calculus of industrial hazard is a blend of industrial systems, people, and environments
that also include geological, atmospheric, ecological, psychological and social components.
These combine in different ways to create a specific hazard. For example, faulty equipment,
operator error, and a south-westerly air flow all helped to shape the events that occurred at
Three Mile Island nuclear power station (Sills, Wolf, and Shelanski 1982; Houts, Cleary, and
Hu 1988). The Challenger space shuttle disaster involved, among others, a vulnerable fluid
seal, cold weather, and an impatient launch team - although the official inquiry blamed only
the seal.
 Explosion in a plant handling or producing toxic substances
 Accidents in storage facilities handling large and various quantities of chemicals
 Accidents during the transportation of chemicals from one site to another
 Misuse of chemicals, resulting in contamination of food stocks or the environment,
overdosing of agrochemicals
 Instantaneous bulk release of pollutants/contaminant
 Mass release from natural source
 Improper waste management such as uncontrolled dumping of toxic
 Chemicals, failure in waste management systems or accidents in wastewater treatment plants
 Technological system failures
 Failures of plant safety design or plant components
 Natural hazards such as fire, earthquakes, landslides
 Sabotage
 Mass poisoning (intentional or unintentional)
 Human error

A number of factors could trigger chemical accidents, some of which are as follows:

 Process and Safety Control System Failures:

o Technical errors
o Human errors
 Natural calamities: For example, Release of acrylonitrile at Bhuj, during earthquake in
2001, and damage to Phosphoric acid sludge containment during Orissa Supercyclone in
1999.
 Terrorist attacks/Sabotage

Sources of Chemical Disasters

 Manufacturing and Formulation Facility (including during Commissioning & Process

Operation; Maintenance, Disposal and Waste Management)
 Material Handling and Storage
o Bulk Storages: In manufacturing facilities and isolated storages (including tank farms
in Ports & Docks
o Storages of Small Containers: In manufacturing facilities, in isolated warehouses and
godowns, and
o Storage of Fuels (LPG Depots etc.)
 Pipelines, and
 Transportation (road-, rail -, air- & waterways)

Impacts
Impacts of chemical disaster may the following and can be further understood in short-term
and long-term perspectives:

 death, injury, physiological health effects and losses

 damage to environmental resources, like land/soil, land-use, water bodies/resources, air-
quality and movements, local-climate, crops/forests and bio-products
 disruption of environmental services, e.g. water supply, aesthetic and recreation,
environmental & public health, sanitation, garbage management
 damage and losses to structures, buildings, machines/equipment, facilities
 psychological trauma, stress and lack of well-being
 insurance losses, and economic losses related to disruption of productivity, wages,
remuneration, incentives
 increase in vulnerability to other hazards including natural and environmental exposures,
 and law & order instability, community outcries, litigations and public governance disruption

Intensity and damageability of a chemical disaster depends on various factors shown in

figure II.
Factors determining severity of a hazardous event
Immediate, short-term and long-term effects of a hazardous chemical incidence depends upon
the source of release, geo-physiographic and meteorological conditions, structural settings,
and exposures, and relative vulnerability of different factors. A pictorial model of various
primary, secondary and following-order impacts is shown at figure III.

Figure III. Environmental sources and various exposures resulting in disaster impacts
Strategies for Chemical Disaster Management

Alike other disasters, chemical disaster management has two major components, viz. (a)
Disaster Risk Reduction and Management and (b) Emergency Preparedness, Response and
litigations.

Various functions like site selection and site assessment, hazard inventory/characteristics and
vulnerability/exposure analysis, Ecological Modelling and scenarios, disaster
mitigation systems, CDM in multi-hazard framework, GIS & Remote Sensing
Application, ICT Tools, Environmental laws and policies, Emergency Risk
Assessment, Emergency planning, preparedness, incident command system, post-
accident investigations, various tools like safety surveillance, safety audit, environmental
audit, land-use planning, etc.

Globally accumulated experience of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, cyclones etc.
can be used to keep ourselves prepared to face emergencies such as the outbreak of epidemics,
the psychiatric trauma of loss of shelter and security or contamination of food and water. In
contrast, the consequences of chemical disasters and their impact on environmental and health
are almost unpredictable. There is usually no warning signal and hence very little time to
prepare the community to face the grave consequences. More often than not, the cause effect
relationship in a chemical disaster is difficult to establish and hence the initiation of measures
for emergency treatment has to be done on arbitrary considerations. This can have an adverse
influence on the post emergency rehabilitation scheme as well.

The decade 1974-84 witnessed an usually large number of industrial accidents involving
hazardous chemicals: The flixborough explosion, the Beek disaster consequent on the release
under pressussre of propylene, the Seveso disaster, the Mississagua accident due to collision
of wagons of chlorine and propane, the Houston soill of anhydrous ammonia, the
Sommerville, Massachussetts spill of phosphorous trichloride, the Mexico
explosion involving liquefied gas and, the worse of all, the Bhopal Disaster of Dec 1984.

Various steps of chemical disaster risk management are categorized into five groups of
following stages:

1. Hazard and Risk Assessment:

o Hazard Analysis (HAZAN)
o Hazard & Operability Studies (HAZOP)
o Event tree and fault tree analysis
o Maximum Credible Accident Analysis (MCAA)
o Consequence Analysis
o Exposure & Vulnerability Studies
o Risk Characterization
o Risk Evaluation and Acceptance
2. Prevention and Mitigation:
o Technology/material substitution and mitigation
o Disaster Management (safety system) Plan

Planning & Response:

o On-site Emergency Response Plan

o Off-site Emergency Response Plan including domino effects and Na-tech risks
3. Integration into Mainstream:
o Integration of Risk Management into Overall Environmental Policy, Goals and
Lay-out Plan of the premises
o Integration of Chemical Disaster Risk Management into Multi-hazard Risk
Management Procedures, and District Disaster Management Plan
4. Integration into Development:
o Integration of Chemical Disaster Risk Management Plan into Land-use and
Development Planning using mapping based approach
 Environmental systems analysis, modeling and scenario simulation are the activities
employed under the steps listed above, and employ following hardware and software tools:

 Atmospheric release: Dispersion, plume and concentration models

 Ground release: Geo-hydrodynamic models, Liquid Flow models, Two-phase flow models
 Release in water: Steam-flow models, 1-D and 2-D models for diffusion and dilution
 Risk-contour development and Land-use models: GIS software
 Consequence modeling
 Risk Information system tools
 GIS based emergency simulation, lay-out and land-use, emergency planning, response and
resource management

Looking to the comprehensive risk management approach that involves the steps of different
stages of disaster management cycle, viz. assessment, prevention, mitigation, preparedness,
response, recovery and rehabilitation, following aspects are important to be envisaged in a
holistic approach to chemical disaster management:

 Involvement of all relevant stakeholders

 Interdisciplinary approach in assessments, planning and organization of activities
 Generation and effective management of databases, information and knowledge networking,
with application of modern technologies
 Integration of chemical disaster management in the holistic framework of disaster risk
reduction and management
 Mainstreaming chemical disaster risk management in regional planning and development
 Integrated approach to capacity development through training, awareness, knowledge
management
 Voluntary arrangements, partnership and incentive based approaches for effective governance

In order to effectively organize the preparedness and responses to likely chemical

emergencies, an objective, systematic, written and applicable plan need to be in place at
different levels, viz. the industry, local, district, state and Central level. Development of
policy directives, guidelines and strategic tools, e.g. assessments (EIA, Audit, LCA, Risk
Analysis, Multi-hazard vulnerability analysis), fiscal (PLI, Cess, Levi), market based
(labeling, ISO), planning (on-site and off-site, carrying capacity based developmental
 planning, land-use governance, industrial estate planning, site selection), enforcement (law,
rules, protocols), policy (industrial ecology,) and voluntary arrangements are to be made
more integrated, practical and effective. Legislations and mechanisms at both the "book"
level and also the "operational" level are equally important. A community centric approach to
holistic risk management has been suggested in figure V.

A holistic risk management framework for chemical-disaster prevention and management,

thus, is a multi-disciplinary state of affairs, involving expertise from hard and soft disciplines
of environmental studies; as mentioned below:

 Off-site perspectivesgeo-hydrology, atmospheric science, geography/land-use/ regional

planning, geoinformatics, disaster risk mitigation, environmental law, emergency
planning, emergency medicine system, socio-psychological & trauma care, emergency
communication, etc.
 On-site perspectives: environmental system, chemistry, process engineering, incident-
control system, fire, occupational health care & emergency medical system, internal
transport, communication, etc.

On-site emergencies are the chemical accidents that are controllable within the promises of
the industry/installation boundary by the emergency management systems of the respective
occupier within its own resources, internally or pooled in the proximity, and thus, without
actively involving the State Government. Whereas, it is called off-site emergency when
initially an on-site emergency emerges to an extent in size and intensity that it is beyond the
capacity and resources at the occupier level (under On-site plan) and the Government is
requested to take over the incident of the emergency. In such situations, District Collector
acts as the Chief Incident Controller and an Off-site emergency plan is said to be in
operation. Various departments, services and relevant experts are involved in preparation and
execution of the off-site emergency plans.
In order to address the paradigm shift envisaged under the DM Act 2005, pro-active risk
management framework for chemical disasters is expected to encompass the stages, viz. (a)
sensitivity based site assessment (b) hazard analysis and physical risk assessment (c)
vulnerability analysis and mapping (d) multi-hazard impact analysis (e) maximum credible
accident scenario analysis and consequence assessment (f) disaster risk
mitigation (structural & non-structural) (g) emergency planning and preparedness
(h) emergency response drills, and (i) operations and evaluations.
 Figure VI. Cyclic-framework of preventive risk management for chemical disasters
International Obligations

The sound management of chemicals and hazardous waste was addressed at the World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in Johannesburg from 26 August to 4
September 2002. Delegates agreed to text in the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation
supporting entry into force of the Rotterdam PIC Convention by 2003 and the Stockholm
POPs Convention by 2004. The Plan of Implementation also contains commitments to:

 reduce the significant effects of chemicals and hazardous waste on human health and the
environment by 2020;
 encourage countries to implement the new globally harmonized system for the classification
and labeling of chemicals, with a view to having the system operational by 2008;
 promote efforts to prevent international illegal trafficking of hazardous chemicals and
hazardous waste, as well as damage resulting from the transboundary movement and disposal
of hazardous waste; and
 further develop a strategic approach to international chemicals management based on the
Bahia Declaration and Priorities for Action beyond 2000 of the Intergovernmental Forum on
Chemical Safety (IFCS) by 2005.

United Nations Environment Programme has a Chemical Section and the programmes there
under are: Persistent Organic Pollutants, Mercury Programme, Land & Cadmium Activities,
Legal File, SAICHEM, Chemical Information Projects and Consultant Roster. In Feb 2006,
over 190 countries including India acceded to a Strategic Approach to International
Chemicals Management (SAICM)- a voluntary agreement to ensure safe use of chemicals by
 2020. India has decided to contribute to the newly created Quick Start Programme (QSP)
trust fund. This initiative of UNEP consists of an Over Arching Policy Strategy and a Global
Plan of action.

The participation and involvement in international agreements concerning management of

chemicals is well developed in India. Most of the major international organisations such as the
WHO, ILO, World Bank, UNIDO, FAO and others are working actively in India. The major
international programmes are:

 International Programme of Chemical Safety (IPCS),

 Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), including:
 Rotterdam Convention on Prior Informed Consent Procedure (PIC) for highly hazardous
industrial chemicals and pesticide formulations in international trade, adapted in 1998
 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and
their Disposal, adapted in 1992
 Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POP), adapted in 2001
 International Register for Potentially Toxic Chemicals (IRPTC) and UNEP cleaner
production programme.
 UNITAR - Globally Harmonized System for Chemical Classification and Labelling
 Asia Pacific Environmental Innovation Strategy Project

The Stockholm Convention is a global treaty to protect human health and the environment
from persistent organic pollutants (POPs). POPs are chemicals that remain intact in the
environment for long periods, become widely distributed geographically, accumulate in the
fatty tissue of living organisms and are toxic to humans and wildlife. POPs circulate globally
and can cause damage wherever they travel. In implementing the Convention, Governments
will take measures to eliminate or reduce the release of POPs into the environment.

PIC: (Accorrding to estimates by the WHO, about one million accidents each year are caused
worldwide through poisoning from pesticides. The worldwide trade in dangerous chemicals is
merely the beginning of the life cycle of a chemical; it is followed by storage, use, and the
disposal of residual stocks. That is why steps should be taken as early as the trade stage to
ensure that dangerous chemicals do not adversely affect man and the environment). In May
2001 the signatory conference for the POPs Convention took place in Stockholm. The POPs
Convention implements international prohibition and restriction measures with regard to
certain persistent organic pollutants (POPs). The core of the Convention is that twelve
particularly dangerous POPs for the environment are to be prohibited or reduced until they are
totally eliminated.

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and
their Disposal is the most comprehensive global environmental agreement on hazardous and
other wastes. The Convention has 169 Parties and aims to protect human health and the
environment against the adverse effects resulting from the generation, management,
transboundary movements and disposal of hazardous and other wastes. The Basel Convention
came into force in 1992. The intergovernmental forum on chemical safety (IFCS) is a unique,
over-arching mechanism to develop and promote strategies and partnerships among national
governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. It defines chemical
safety as the prevention of the adverse effects, both short- and long-term, to humans and the
environment from the production, storage, transportation, use and disposal of chemicals. IFCS
provides an open, transparent and inclusive forum for discussing issues of common interest
 and also new and emerging issues in the area of sound management of chemicals. IFCS plays
a unique multi-faceted role as a flexible, open and transparent brainstorming and bridge-
building forum for Governments, intergovernmental organizations and non-governmental
organizations including from the private sector. This role has facilitated consensus building on
issues and actions addressing the sound management of chemicals. By its efforts it contributes
to the implementation of the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management
(SAICM) and the work of other chemicals-related international organizations and institutions,
with following purposes:

 To provide policy guidance

 To develop strategies in a coordinated and integrated manner
 To foster understanding of issues
 To promote the required policy support

The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM) was adopted at

the International Conference on Chemicals 6. February 2006 It was subsequently endorsed by
the ninth special session of UNEP Governing Council in its decision SS.IX/1 on 9 February
2006. Further information on the Strategic Approach can be found on
www.chem.unep.ch/saicm. SAICM comprises three core texts:

 The Dubai Declaration,which expresses the commitment to SAICM by Ministers, heads of

delegation and representatives of civil society and the private sector.

Figure VII: 10 steps to APELL Process (UNEP)

 The Overarching Policy Strategy, which sets out the scope of SAICM, the needs it
addresses and objectives for risk reduction, knowledge and information, governance,
capacity-building and technical cooperation and illegal international traffic, as well as
underlying principles and financial and institutional arrangements. The ICCM adopted the
 Overarching Policy Strategy which together with the Dubai Declaration constitutes a firm
commitment to SAICM and its implementation.
 A Global Plan of Actionwhich sets out proposed "work areas and activities" for
implementation of the Strategic Approach. The ICCM recommended the use and further
development of the Global Plan of Action as a working tool and guidance document.

APELL
Awareness and Preparedness for Emergencies at Local Level (APELL) was launched in
1988, following various industrial accidents which had adverse impacts on health and the
environment - Bhopal in 1984 and the Sandoz warehouse fire near Basel in 1986, which
resulted in extensive contamination of the Rhine, are obvious examples. APELL is a tool
developed by the United Nations Environment Programme's Industry and Environment centre
(UNEP IE), in conjunction with governments and industry. Its purpose is to minimise the
occurrence and harmful effects of technological accidents and emergencies, particularly,
though not exclusively, in developing countries.

National Safety Council of India (NSCI) has been partnering with the UNEP-DTIE since 1992
with successful implementation of 5-year (1992-97) APELL-LAMP Programme in India. Ever
since, the APELL Programme in India has been growing, which is characterized by the
implementation of the TransAPELL Programme in 2000 and by establishing the globally first
National APELL Centre in Mumbai in 2002 and its sub-centres in Tuticorin (2004) and Pune
(2006).

The UNEP-Trans APELL is being strengthened as a key vehicle for UNEP work, at the local
level in preventing and preparing for all environmental disasters (e.g. flooding, earthquake,
landslide, drought, cyclone, chemical release) and technological mishaps leading to fire,
accidents, etc. The APELL Multi-hazard programme for disaster reduction has been decided
in the UNEP General Council Meeting during February 2006 at Dubai.