This project was designed to address the needs of the existing toxic chemical accident response system laid out in the 2010-2013 "Phase II Reinforced Toxic Chemical Substance Safety Management and Accident Response Project" and to strengthen domestic environmental accident response actions by maintaining 24-hour year-round chemical accident consulting and accident notification services in conjunction with consulting and monitoring centers, organizing a nationwide industrial joint prevention organization, providing combined annual training classes for response personnel, providing and implementing hazard prevention and response plans for high-risk toxic chemical substances, participating in POPs-related conferences and international response interchange activities, and updating accident prevention and response information and toxic chemical accident text message e-bulletins.
With regard to 24-hour year-round chemical accident monitoring and professional chemical product consulting services, this year the project provided 1,591 monitoring and consulting service sessions (the contractual requirement is 850 or more sessions), including 845 media monitoring actions and 746 general consulting service sessions; 489 environmental accident/environmental protection notifications of relevant service offices at the EPA (the Bureau of Air Quality Protection and Noise Control received the greatest number of notifications – 105); 63 emergency accident response actions; and 268 recommendations to on-site disaster relief units; updated basic information files for "toxic chemical accident central accident response center" personnel; implemented telephone and fax connection tests 169 person-times; held seven response team work conferences and response videoconferences, which resulted in 60 conclusions. With regard to study, planning, and organization work, the project submitted six sets of analytical data on the "High Risk Toxic Chemical Substance Selection Principles in Pollution Incidents Derived from Natural Disasters," "Environmental Actions of the Japanese Government after the March 11 Earthquake," "Establishment of a Toxic Chemical Accident Training Site and Basic Asset Allocation and Establishment Needs," and "U.S. Chemical Safety Board" respectively,” “data collection and compiling on the environmental issues related to the most severe flooding in central Thailand in 20 years”, and “Toxic Chemical Substances and “Risk Analysis and Response Strategies with regard to the Concentrated Handling of Toxic Chemical Substances”.
The project also assisted in conducting research and consultation to provide reference with regard to “domestic and international liabilities and insurance and toxic chemical substance handling liabilities”, made recommendations on adjustments to “criteria for assessing fine amounts for violating the Toxic Chemical Substance Control Act”, and conducted research and consultation to provide reference for “Online Reporting Measures for Transport Activity Response Plans”; completed response data updates for 27 newly regulated toxic chemical substances and 271 toxic chemical substances and carried out two no-early-warning tests of 37 consultants and experts at a 100% call success rate; issued six environmental toxic chemical accident text message e-bulletins (with 5,002 subscribers and a total of 232,345 viewers); and, in order to maintain normal system operation and adequate information security, conducted daily point testing, completed development of "revision of status changes in five urban areas," "advanced emergency accident notification query," and "toxic chemical substance regulatory listing data query" functions. The project also completed the virtualization of the toxic chemical substance accident server and system migration work; worked with the data monitoring department to carry out drills to prevent data security attacks and data security reporting matters, thus continuing to ensure normal system operation.
With regard to international interchange, visits, and participation in conferences, project personnel participated in the SC POPs COP5 conference from April 22 to May 1, during which time endosulfan and its relevant isomers were listed for regulatory control in the Annex A of the convention; and visited the environmental response training and assets deployment facilities and departments of Germany's Bayer, BASF, and DuPont from May 31 to Jun 9, and participated in discussions concerning issues such as transport regulations and establishment of a joint prevention organization by the companies. Furthermore, the project plans to hold an international interchange conference at which lecturers will consist of domestic experts and scholars and personnel from the DuPont and BASF companies; 295 people participated in this conference.
With regard to the promotion of toxic chemical accident joint prevention and operation assessment work, the project's assistance methods included providing companies with uniform joint prevention organization documents, providing existing joint prevention organization information to companies who are joining the organization, helping companies to perform joint prevention harmonization, and providing legal, regulatory, and joint prevention organization consulting services; these services were provided a total of 176 times. In addition, the project also assisted with the review of 83 joint prevention documents, conducted six explanatory meetings concerning joint prevention work circles, issued 1,060 pieces of joint prevention work circle literature; completed three no-early-warning tests and six on-site joint prevention work circle exercises for toxic chemical accident joint prevention organizations; held explanatory meeting on assistance to operating plants and facilities, performed document review work, and conducted 36 on-site assistance surveys.
With regard to domestic disaster prevention and relief system response propagation and training work, the project held three sessions of routine and advanced training (214 people participated); studied 27 response team deployment case reports; held six accident case response procedure expert review conferences (166 people participated), research and analytical data for which was shared at a national toxic chemical substance accident case studies conference attended by 708 people; held a response team equipment management handbook coordination and management conference; established a management system functional planning and assets management interface and continued to collect and post assets data; completed 28 on-site quantitative audits of response and monitoring work and performed 1,775 quantitative analyses of monitoring data; and held six hazard prevention and response plan review training classes for environmental protection units (166 people participated); and held one toxic chemical substance management operation review conference attended by 126 people.
With regard to the promotion and implementation of high risk toxic chemical substance "hazard prevention and response plans," the project completed work for ten high-risk toxic chemical substances employing the methods drafted at the March 25, 2010 conference on high-risk toxic chemical substance selection principles; performed risk assessment analysis work for Class 1 and 2 toxic chemical substances in accordance with the content of "Technical Regulations for Assessment of Health Risk"; provided regional control recommendations for toxic chemical substances in conjunction with the functions of a VBA GIS system program; completed "Accident Model Analysis and Control Distance" guidelines for Class 3 substances, drafted reference guidelines for hazard prevention and emergency response plans; held five explanatory meetings on transport hazard prevention and response plan writing and 10 on-site hands-on system operation instruction sessions (1,190 people participated); and conducted ten in-plant transport hazard prevention and response plan surveys and data review work.
