Calculation and impact of injury outcome to the public after the exposure to industrial chemicals and nerve gases
Publish date: 2015-12-31
Report number: FOI-R--4203--SE
Pages: 25
Written in: Swedish
Keywords:
- Risk area assessments
- probit function
- industrial chemicals
- nerve agents
Abstract
The aim of this report is to provide guidance for how to calculate injury assessments on the basis of the results of different dispersion models. Dispersion models are intended to describe the distribution of chemicals in the environment for example after a chemical accident. With these results, we can predict the estimated risk of health effects to the public at various examples of events where people may be exposed to toxic industrial chemicals or chemical warfare agents. In this report we have taken account of three categories; healthy, sensitive and very sensitive individuals in the calculation of the injury outcomes or risk areas following exposure to selected chemical or nerve agents. The use of the three categories results in a more reliable scenario, and depending on the geographical location, an estimation of the number of healthy and particularly sensitive individuals, who are more prone to getting injuries after exposure, can be accomplished. Only exposure from inhalation is considered in this report. The industrial chemicals chosen for this report are acrylonitrile, ammonia, bromine, ethylene oxide, phosgene, chlorine, nitrogen dioxide, methylisocyanate, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride and hydrogen sulfide. The chemicals are chosen based on the scale of production, handling, storage, and transport in Sweden. Nerve agents selected for this project are sarin, soman and VX. These are classified as weapons of mass destruction in UN Resolution 687. The current report is part of the project "Effektmodeller", which is a summary of the results of the project's C-section.