Chemical Accidents - Procedures
Guidance on the Interpretation of Major Accident to the Environment for the Purposes of the COMAH Regulations
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from:
The Stationery Office: (www.tso-online.co.uk/).
This report is intended to provide guidance on the sampling procedures necessary to assess the extent and nature of environmental contamination following a chemical accident. Its intended users included industrial chemists on relevant sites, local authority environmental health officers and Environment Agency and Scottish Environment Protection Agency inspections and pollution control officers. It provides additional guidance for implementation of the Seveso II Directive. The report is not intended for a lay readership and assumes a basic scientific knowledge and a level of technical expertise regarding measurements and sampling techniques.
The report takes the user through the following important stages in environmental sampling after a chemical accident:
- gathering information about site operations, the surrounding environment, the chemicals involved in processes on the site and their environmental behaviour. This information may or may not be known before a chemical accident occurs:
- collecting the full range of information about the accident;
- planning and reviewing sampling plans;
- ensuring sampling and analysis uses correct methodologies and with appropriate quality control.
User's understanding of the procedures described in the report is aided by the inclusion of a worked example based on a fire at a large chemical plant.
Copies of this publication, price £27.50, ISBN 0 11 753495 1 are available
from:
The Stationery Office: (www.tso-online.co.uk/).
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Page updated
31 August 1999;
Page last modified
21 November, 2002