(78o) Accident Reporting and Consequences: Are We Learning as Much as We Should?

Prevention of major industrial accidents has become a shared goal worldwide due to the potential severity of consequences resulting from the unintentional release of dangerous substances. But do we really know as much as we should about consequences of potential accidents? Data and case studies provided on major industrial accidents tend to focus on lessons learned for re-engineering the process. While consequence data are reported at least nominally in most reports, precision, quality and completeness of consequence information is often lacking. Details on consequences that are often or sometimes available but not provided can include severity and type of injuries, distance of victims from the source, exposure measurements, volume of the release, population in potentially affected zones, and weather conditions. Yet these type of date are very useful for improving predictive capabilities of consequence models and chemical risk assessments as well as aiding preparedness efforts of emergency responders. This paper will discuss the results of a study of consequence data from accidents involving toxic releases reported in the EU's MARS accident database. The study analysed the precision, quality and completeness of three categories of consequence data reported: the description of health effects, consequence assessment and chemical risk assessment factors, and emergency response information. The paper will report on the findings from this study and discuss whether and how collection of consequence data should be improved.