Chemical incidents resulted in hazardous substances releases in the context of human health hazards

Abstract

Objectives:The research purpose was to analyze data concerning chemical incidents in Poland collected in 1999Poland collected in -2009 in terms of health hazards. Material and Methods: The data was obtained, using multimodal information technology (IT) system, from chemical incidents reports prepared by rescuers at the scene. The final analysis covered sudden events associated with uncontrolled release of hazardous chemical substances or mixtures, which may potentially lead to human exposure. Releases of unidentified substances where emergency services took action to protect human health or environment were also included. Results: The number of analyzed chemical incidents in 1999-2009 was 2930 with more than 200 different substances released. The substances were classified into 13 groups of substances and mixtures posing analogous risks. Most common releases were connected with non-flammable corrosive liquids, including: hydrochloric acid (199 cases), sulfuric(VI) acid (131 cases), sodium and potassium hydroxides (69 cases), ammonia solution (52 cases) and butyric acid (32 cases). The next group were gases hazardous only due to physico-chemical properties, including: extremely flammable propane-butane (249 cases) and methane (79 cases). There was no statistically significant trend associated with the total number of incidents. Only with the number of incidents with flammable corrosive, toxic and/or harmful liquids, the regression analysis revealed a statistically significant downward trend. The number of victims reported was 1997, including 1092 children and 18 fatalities. Conclusions: The number of people injured, number of incidents and the high 9th place of Poland in terms of the number of Seveso establishments, and 4 times higher number of hazardous industrial establishments not covered by the Seveso Directive justify the need for systematic analysis of hazards and their proper identification. It is advisable enhance health risk assessment, both qualitative and quantitative, by slight modification of the data collection system so as to enable the determination of released chemical concentration and exposed populations. Int J Occup Med Environ Health 2017;30(1):95-110

How Can Humans be Damaged from Sulfuric Acid?

“…Especially acidic or basic materials, among chemical substances are particularly harmful to human body and among which, sulfuric acid is one of the major materials that cause chemical burns due to acidity [5]. As a result of analyzing 2,930 accidents that were exposed to chemical substances and had occurred in Poland from 1999 to 2009, it was found that they were exposed to more than 200 chemical substances, and especially sulfuric acid, among non-flammable corrosive liquids occupied the second highest frequency following hydrochloric acid [3]. Shin et al [2] analyzed the patients who were hospitalized to the emergency center for treating chemical damage occurred due to chemical accidents at industrial places for five years and reported that the high-frequency chemical damage-causing materials include hydrofluoric acid, compound chemicals, sulfuric acid, and magnesium in consecutive order.…”

“…Also, it is used as a material for committing a terrorist act against others in addition to hydrochloric acid, because it causes fatal damages to human body as a strong acid. According to the researches that have been conducted so far, sulfuric acid, among various chemical substances that causes chemical damage is one of the causative agents that occupy the highest frequency following the hydrofluoric acid [2,3]. However, there are very few studies on major exposure mechanism of sulfuric acid damage, area of damage, and severity.…”

Multimodal Transport Network Optimization Considering Safety Stock under Real-Time Information

“…Since the actual inventory transfer amount of distribution department 2 is the same as the actual inventory transfer amount of distribution department 1, it can be obtained by combining (14) and (18):…”

“…With the update of demand information, enterprises can effectively deal with the mismatch between supply and demand through the multimodal transport logistics supply network, which can reduce inventory backlog and improve customer service level [4][5][6][7][8]. The imbalance of inventory control caused by mismatch between supply and demand can be handled by means of emergency ordering or by multimodal transport from the transshipment center [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. The problem of emergency ordering is that the adjustment of production resources and the compression of the construction period will inevitably lead to high costs [16][17][18][19][20].…”

“…Therefore, more and more enterprises tend to adopt multimodal transport to deal with the problem of supply and demand mismatch between regions [21]. Previous studies showed the significance of multimodal transport problems [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20] and solutions [21] that can be improved from different perspectives. For instance, Mengliang et al [1], Todd et al [2], and Pałaszewskatkacz et al [3] showed that demand information cannot be ignored; references [4][5][6][7][8] found the importance of requirements updates; researchers [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] emphasized that safety stock should be considered in multimodal transport; costs control should be considered in multimodal transportation optimization from literatures [16][17][18][19][20]; and Zhang et al [21] provided a good method reference for multimodal transport network optimization problem.…”