© 2002 Occupational and Environmental Medicine
EDUCATION
EPISODES OF ENVIRONMENTAL POISONING WORLDWIDE
N J Langford1,* and
R E Ferner2,
1 Clinical Pharmacology Section, Department of Medicine, University of Birmingham, Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, UK
2 West Midlands Centre for Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting, City Hospital, Birmingham, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr R Ferner, West Midlands Centre for Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting, City Hospital, Dudley Road, Birmingham B18 7QH, UK;
r.e.ferner@bham.ac.uk
Keywords: chemical disasters; chemical industry; environmental pollution; disaster planning; poisoning
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
The environment is composed of chemical substances, many of which are poisonous if present in large amounts, and some of which are poisonous even in small quantities. Within the industrialised world, specific concentrations of highly dangerous chemicals may be localised to a certain area, vastly increasing the risk to the local environment. Although highly regulated by legislation such as the Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 1999 (COMAH), and agencies such as the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) and the Environment Agency (in England and Wales), or the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) (in Scotland), industry has been a common source of environmental contamination. Additionally, as we discuss below, manufacturing of chemicals is not the only industrial process that places the environment at risk. Environmental poisoning can also result from the transport, storage, and secondary uses of the primary product.
Small scale releases of toxic chemical substances are common within
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