DCHAS-L Discussion List Archive
Date: Sat, 1 May 2010 11:33:27 -0400
Reply-To: DCHAS-L Discussion List <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU>
Sender: DCHAS-L Discussion List <DCHAS-L**At_Symbol_Here**LIST.UVM.EDU>
From: "Dr. Jay A. Young" <chemsafety**At_Symbol_Here**VERIZON.NET>
Subject: Re: Google chemical health and safety events summary
Ralph,
Really, this is a great and good thing that you have done. Obviously it's a
lot of work on your part and I'm sure that many people appreciate the
information.
But especially, as time passes, the accumulated summary -- such as this one
that you have prepared -- will prove to be very useful indeed.
Thank you Ralph, for doing this nice favor for all the rest of us.
Jay
----- Original Message -----
From: "Secretary, ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety"
To:
Sent: Friday, April 30, 2010 3:31 PM
Subject: [DCHAS-L] Google chemical health and safety events summary
> I've been sending headlines from google about chemical health and safety
> events since February 1, so we're finishing the first three months of that
> habit. I thought I would provide a quick summary of the statistics I was
> able to easily generate from this data. If you're interested in exploring
> the information that's been gathered, you can use the filtering functions
> at
> http://delicious.com/acsdchas/
> to focus on particular kinds of events. Anyway, the brief numbers are:
>
> Time period: Feb 1 to April 30 2010
>
> 314 incidents reported by google; the search terms varied slightly during
> that period but are becoming more standardized.
> 233 of the events reported occurred in U.S.
>
> Type of Event
> 67 fires
> 53 explosions
> 38 spills
> 28 leaks
>
> Sector of Event
> 106 in industry
> 41 in transportation
> 41 illegal activities
> 35 in labs
> 36 at home
>
> Consequence
> 124 public responses were the highest consequence reported
> 74 report injuries
> 30 report death
>
> Chemicals involved:
> (This is the hardest category; I began trying to identify this from the
> media report about half way through the time period studied and the media
> is not always trustworthy in this respect)
> 29 unknown chemicals involved
> 6 cleaning chemicals
> 4 formaldehyde
> 4 agricultural chemicals
> 4 ethanol
>
> This is still an experimental issue, but I think useful in providing some
> context for discussions about chemical safety issues and particularly in
> terms of gathering anecdotes for educational purposes.
>
> Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for improving this
> effort.
>
> - Ralph
>
> Ralph Stuart
> secretary**At_Symbol_Here**dchas.org
> Secretary
> Division of Chemical Health and Safety
> American Chemical Society
>
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