Accident history database: An opportunity

The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 mandated the development of regulation s for the protection of workers, the public, and the environment from catas trophic releases and chemical plant accidents. As a result, the US Environm ental Protection Agency (EPA) promulgated the Risk Management Program mile in June 1996. Approximately 66,000 regulated facilities' are required to co mply with all the requirements by June 1999 and submit a risk management pl an to the EPA. Each risk management plan will contain amongst other things a 5-year accident history for the facility. The 5-year accident history database scheduled to become available to the p ublic sometime in 1999 is potentially a very large and useful database. Thi s presents nit opportunity for determining macroscopic as well as microscop ic causal factors for chemical plant accidents and then implementing these determinations for solving the underlying problems. However there are vario us issues and potential pitfalls that must be kept in mind. For example, da ta integrity, taxonomy of the database and the wide differences in the 60;0 00 facilities are issues that represent challenges that require some novel approaches. The authors present their experience in analyzing EPA's acciden tal release information program database. The experience will guide the ana lysis of the 5-year accident history database, attempting to identify the s ituations that commonly result in accidental chemical releases.