Prevention of technological disasters: Adoption of indicative criteria associated with GHS in regulating major accident hazards

Abstract

The occurrence of a technological disaster could be due to different causes, one of which is chemicals. The major accidents triggered by chemicals, such as the Seveso incident in 1976, the Bhopal incident in 1984, and the recent Beirut explosion in 2020, have had severe impacts on people and the environment. Many countries have established their respective regulatory frameworks to prevent major accident hazards involving chemicals. However, the huge number of chemicals makes it almost impossible to identify and characterise all the chemicals. To manage this problem, the use of indicative criteria that have adopted the GHS (Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals) can serve to ensure safety in the handling of chemicals and to prevent major accidents. The indicative criteria are used to group chemicals with the same hazards, which are then assigned threshold quantities (TQ) to assess potential chemical risks. Countries like those in the EU, Singapore, China and Australia have adopted indicative criteria associated with GHS into their respective regulations. However, these regulations are not the same. Thus, by learning about practices adopted by these countries, and also taking into account the GHS implementation, this study proposes adopting indicative criteria and relevant TQs to prevent major accidents. We hope that the proposed indicative criteria will be useful, particularly for developing countries that would like to establish or amend their national legislation to prevent major accidents involving chemicals, because besides lacking information about previous accidents, they may also lack a comprehensive chemical database and experts/resource persons.