Characterization of Hazardous Substance Emergency Events During Which Responders Became Victims Open Access
Souther, Christina (2013)
Published
Abstract
Background: Hazardous substance emergency events, defined by the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) as "uncontrolled or illegal releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances or the hazardous by-products of substances,"5 occur frequently in the United States9 and can be difficult to plan for due to their unexpected nature. The objective of this analysis is to determine which types of hazardous substance events more frequently affect responders in order to locate possible weaknesses in procedures and inform future training.
Methods: Hazardous substance emergency event surveillance data from 15 states during the years of 2002 through 2011 were used. Six of the 15 states consistently reported events throughout the study time period while the other states reported during intermittent years. Descriptive statistics were obtained for the six consistent states to characterize the types of events. Events from all states were analyzed using multivariate regression to identify associations between event characteristics and victims.
Results: Event type, day of the event, weather at the time of the event, cause of the event, land use in the surrounding area and the type of release were significantly associated with one or more victims resulting from an event. Cause of release, land use, and type of release were significantly associated with responder victims resulting from an event. The two most common types of events had fewer total victims as well as fewer responder victims per event than the average event.
Conclusions: The outcome of responder victims and the number of responder victims are related to the land use of the site of release, the cause of the release and the type of release. Situations that can be anticipated, such as the most common events, and more quickly controlled, such as those occurring in industrial areas, led to fewer victims. The events caused by fire and explosion had the strongest measure of association with responder victim outcomes. These events are inherently dangerous; it may be worth focusing more training and preparation efforts on this type of release to mitigate some of the threat to the responders.
Table of Contents
Introduction...1
Methods...5
Results...6
Discussion...9
Literature Cited...13
Tables and Figures...15
Figure 1. Hazardous Substance Emergency Events Reported by Year in All 15 States, 2002-2011.15
Figure 2. Hazardous Substance Emergency Events Reported by Year in Six States, 2002-2011...15
Figure 3. Victims of HSEES Events by Year and Responder Status in Six States...16
Figure 4. Number of Events by Type and Year in Six States...16
Figure 5. Number of HSEES Events by Primary Weather Condition by Year in Six States...17
Figure 6. Number of Events by Release Cause by Year in Six States...17
Figure 7. Number of Events by Land Use Classification by Year in Six States...18
Figure 8. Number of Events by Type of Release by Year in Six States...18
Table 1. HSEES Event Independent Variables Used in Multivariate Analysis...19
Table 2. Victims of HSEES Events by Year in Six States...19
Table 3. Any Victims Resulting from HSEES Events by Event Characteristics in All 15 States...20
Table 4. Any Responder Victims Resulting from HSEES Events by Event Characteristics in All 15 States...21
Table 5. Number of Victims Resulting from HSEES Events by Event Characteristics in All 15 States ...22
Table 6. Number of Responder Victims Resulting from HSEES Events by Event Characteristics in All 15 States...23
Table 7. Common HSEES Events: Frequency and Number of Victims in All 15 States...23
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