The post Bhopal and post 911 transformations in chemical emergency prevention and response policy.pdf

The post-Bhopal and post-9/11 transformations in chemical emergency prevention and response policy in the United States James C. Belke*, Deborah Y. Dietrich United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Avenue (Mail Code 5104A), Washington, DC 20460, USA Abstract The United States’ approach to incident prevention and response to hazardous chemical facilities has undergone two major transformations in the last 20 years. The first was triggered by the Bhopal tragedy in 1984, which led to major changes within the US chemical industry and a series of Federal laws and regulations intended to prevent major chemical accidents. A more recent transformation is currently underway in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. It involves the advent of various security-related requirements affecting many of the same facilities covered under the existing accident prevention rules. This paper provides an overview of these transformations and their impacts. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Keywords: Chemical accidents; Prevention; Response; Terrorism; Regulation1. Introduction Catastrophes can sometimes lead to beneficial trans- formations. Airline crashes, hurricanes, earthquakes, oil spills, nuclear accidents, toxic chemical releases—in the aftermath of these events, healthy organizations and societies are obligated to reexamine the way things were done, determine what went wrong, and make the necessary changes. For the worldwide chemical industry, it is well acknowledged that the December 1984 toxic chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, sparked such a transformation—a transformation in turn that brought immediate and lasting changes to the US chemical industry, its interaction with local communities, and the nature and extent of its regulatory oversight by all levels of government. Nearly two decades later, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 are sparking another transformation for the US chemical industry. Though no chemical facility was direct