Chemical Hazards and Poisons Report - Issue 17

Synopsis

This issue of the Chemical Hazards and Poisons Report provides papers on four different types of chemical incidents. Three of these incidents are particularly pertinent to the development of a UK chemical incident recovery handbook (which was announced in the January 2010 issue).

In the first incident, the discovery of a piece of military ordnance in sand dunes at a beach in Wales and reported to the police by a concerned member of the public, resulted in the shell being disabled by Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal experts the same day; three days later, Public Health Wales was notified that two members of the disposal team were receiving hospital care for severely blistered skin.

The second incident report describes the complex story of the withdrawal of pork products as a result of contaminated animal feed, resulting in a large scale incident that raised many challenging technical issues.

The third paper summarises three case studies where asbestos contamination occurred in domestic, health care and education settings.  Each of these events points to the need for the development of chemical incident recovery guidance.

As always emergency planning and response is key. In this issue we share four exciting developments that are likely to enhance our ability to prepare for the London 2012 Olympics. These are:

• the work of the HPA’s Real-time Syndromic Surveillance Team, which reports that the combination of syndromic surveillance systems used to routinely monitor the emergence and spread of common infectious diseases in the community in ‘real-time’ can also be used to provide wider health surveillance support in national incidents, including in chemical and radiological emergencies
• the development by the HPA of a method for estimating excess deaths quickly in relation to heatwaves, which can be applied to other events such as coldwaves or widespread air pollution incidents
• the concept, developed by the Metropolitan Police, of a Joint Safety and Health Advice Cell, which should facilitate our ability to work together across the frontline and with other emergency responders including the NHS, to ensure the best use of safety and health expertise and resources during major incidents
• the new CHEMET Service from the Met Office, introduced in August 2009, using the Met Office’s state of the art dispersion model NAME III (the Numerical Atmospheric dispersion Modelling Environment). This represents a significant advancement in the sophistication of the modelling being used and means that the Met Office now offers a seamless dispersion modelling service, ranging from a few kilometres up to global scale events, such as volcanic eruptions from the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland.

With the Olympics approaching, we include an article which discusses the legislation and acute effects from fireworks.

 

Last reviewed: 16 June 2010