Can extreme weather events lead to an increased risk of technogenic accidents in chemical manufacture plants?
Climate change is a relevant challenge humankind is facing in the next decades. The scientific community worldwide is paying an ever-growing attention to strategies and pathways to mitigate it with drastic strategic choices. Europe is coping with an unprecedented occurrence of extreme weather events, causing damage and devastation in various regions of the Union.
Chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats are linked not only to an intentional use of hazardous materials for criminal or warfare purposes, but also to accidental, unintentional release of highly hazardous materials after a major natural disaster. Examples of such “technogenic” events are the Fukushima Daichi nuclear accident in 2011, where the large radioactive material release was caused by the remarkable damages of a tsunami or the Mariana dam disaster in Brazil in 2015, where the collapse of the mine tailings dam in the Minas Gerais region caused a huge pollution wave downstream, that led to a humanitarian crisis of the people living close to the affected polluted river.
Clear signals are showing us that extreme weather events, causing floodings, storms, snowfalls, electric black-outs or wildfires, are expected to be more frequent in the next decades. Such natural dramatic negative events can be transformed and enhanced in high-impact technogenic accidents when industrial manufacture sites or industrial stocking sites, in which highly hazardous chemicals are stored or synthesized, are affected. Highly industrialised areas in the EU as well as in advanced countries worldwide are now more exposed to these unexpected, unintentional threats.
The potential, threatening link between extreme weather conditions and enhanced chemical risk will be dealt with during the presentation. Some exemplar case studies from the past will be shown, thinking of the risks in our highly industrialised societies. A special focus will be devoted to the amplification effect of technogenic disasters triggered by high-frequency naturally occurring events.

Speaker:
Matteo Guidotti, PhD
Italian National Research Council, CNR-SCITEC
via C. Golgi 19, Milan, Italy
Italian Delegate at the Scientific Advisory Board of the OPCW

#OPCW #sicurezza #CSP-28 #chimica