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The environment consists of a variety of different compartments and processes that act together in a complex system that complicate the environmental risk assessment after a chemical accident. The Environment-Accident Index (EAI) is an example of a tool based on a strategy to join the properties of a chemical with site-specific properties to facilitate this assessment and to be used in the planning process. In the development of the EAI it is necessary to make an unbiased judgement of relevant variables to include in the formula and to estimate their relative importance. The development of EAI has so far included the assimilation of chemical accidents, selection of a representative set of chemical accidents, and response values (representing effects in the environment after a chemical accident) have been developed by means of an expert panel. The developed responses were then related to the chemical and site-specific properties, through a mathematical model based on multivariate modelling (PLS), to create an improved EAI model. This resulted in EAInew, a PLS based EAI model connected to a new classification scale. The advantages of EAInew compared to the old EAI (EAIold) is that it can be calculated without the use of tables, it can estimate the effects for all included responses and make a rough classification of chemical accidents according to the new classification scale. Finally EAInew is a more stable model than EAIold, built on a valid base of accident scenarios which makes it more reliable to use for a variety of chemicals and situations as it covers a broader spectra of accident scenarios. EAInew can be expressed as a regression model to facilitate the calculation of the index for persons that do not have access to PLS. Future work can be; an external validation of EAInew; to complete the formula structure; to adjust the classification scale; and to make a real life evaluation of EAInew. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper is an extension of the work of Grubb et al. [Two-dimensional ethanol floods of toluene in homogeneous, unconfined aquifer media, in: J.C. Evans (Ed.), In-Situ Remediation of the Geo-environment, GSP No. 71, ASCE, NY, 1997, p. 255; Mobilization of toluene in layered, unconfined aquifer media during ethanol flooding, in: P.S.S. Pinto (Ed.), Environmental Geotechnics: Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics Lisboa, Portugal. Balkema Rotterdam Brookfield, 7–11 September 1998] on the recovery of lighter-than-water non aqueous phase liquids (LNAPLs) from sandpacks. Dodecane, toluene and octane (500 mL each) were used to simulate fresh and weathered petroleum spills. The ethanol flooding experiments evaluated the feasibility of recovering the LNAPLs from unconfined uniform sandpacks in a quasi two-dimensional apparatus. A combined pure ethanol and 50/50 (vol.%) ethanol–water blend flooding strategy successfully mobilized and recovered the simulated large-volume LNAPL spills (10× greater than previous studies). At flow rates <7 m per day, the toluene and octane recoveries were approximately 84.9 and 88.1%, respectively, which are considered impressive as no optimization was even attempted. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Analyzes how journalists reported the story of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Accidents and journalistic routines; Observation of news conferences in Valdez, Alaska in September 1989; Study of texts and newspaper stories about the spill published by Anchorage Daily News, New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times.

The article focuses on the use of the Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Teams (SCAT) in providing a survey and document of areas affected by oil spills along shorelines. SCAT, which is developed by Environment Canada in the 1990s to provide information for clean-up operations, is linked to the emergency Spatial Pre-SCAT for Arctic Coastal Ecosystem (eSPACE) multi-agency project that uses satellite imagery for coastal mapping of for emergency preparedness on northern coasts of Canada.

The article focuses on the issuance of a report by the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation regarding the chemical incident screening processes implemented for July 2004-June 2005 in the U.S. The report was developed to explain the difference between the number of chemical incidents that fall within the agency's statutory investigative jurisdiction and the number actually investigated. The agency deployed investigators to incident scenes seven times which has resulted to five significant investigations. CSB is an independent agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents.

This article reports on a reworking of public health emergency regulations that came as the result of an agreement by the 2005 World Health Assembly. The revision broadens the scope of notification to the World Health Organization (WHO) from cases of communicable disease to all events that may constitute public health emergencies such as bioterrorism, chemical and/or radiation events. The regulations require automatic notification to WHO of cases of smallpox, wild polio virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the human subtypes of the avian flu.

The article reports that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed a Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), a database to which industries report chemical spills and other hazardous releases in the U.S. TRI Program Director Mike Flynn asserts that the project's goal is to reduce the paperwork burden while maintaining a sufficient flow of information to communities. The EPA has announced the changes of TRI reporting requirements from an annual to a biannual basis. Critics have claimed that they will deprive communities of valuable information about environmental threats.

The article reports on the decline of chemical shipping safety accidents in the U.S. in 1996. According to Chemtrec, a public service of the Chemical Manufacturers Association, the number of serious chemical spills or incidents has decreased since 1971. Henry J. Sauer, director at Chemtrec, said that 10% of the calls received by the company often involve emergencies and only two or three calls a year involve actual injuries from hazardous substances. Sauer credited the decline to the efforts of chemical producers and shipping companies to improve handling procedures.