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Dispersion of hazardous materials

A report summarising and assessing research on industrial safety undertaken within the framework of the EU's Marine Science and Technology research programme has recently been published by the European Commission, DG XII. This covers research which has been undertaken since 19...

A report summarising and assessing research on industrial safety undertaken within the framework of the EU's Marine Science and Technology research programme has recently been published by the European Commission, DG XII. This covers research which has been undertaken since 1982 in the area of dense gas clouds which formed part of a larger programme entitled "Major technical hazards and industrial safety". The report begins with an overview of legislative developments and focuses on the adoption of Directive 82/501/EEC (Seveso Directive) in 1982 and its recent revision in 1997 (Directive 96/82/EC). This is followed by information on a study of dense gas dispersion relevant to industrial hazards. A chapter is devoted to a chronological overview of research activities carried out within the framework of the major technical hazards and industrial safety programme as well as the field and laboratory experiments carried out. One of key chapters of the publication deals with the development of models for the dispersion of dense gases and discusses technology transfer through databases and model evaluation. The final four chapters of the publication place the research in an overall context and discuss the gains made by the research effort. This is followed by a discussion of the major outstanding issues and the current actions being undertaken to address them.