During the past century, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of chemicals produced. Worldwide, there are more than 5 million known chemicals, with an additional 10,000 to 20,000 new chemicals developed each year. Furthermore, an estimated 500,000 unique shipments of hazardous materials occur daily throughout the United States, resulting in thousands of exposures to hazardous materi...

With the passage of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act RCRA and the subsequent amendments to RCRA e orts to provide tighter controls on the transportation and disposal of hazardous waste have been steadily gaining ground This paper intended as a decision support tool for regional planning incorporates information on the hazardous waste generation treatment capacity and the costs of wast...

Most large fire departments that participated in this study expressed confi­ dence in their ability to respond to typical hazardous materials (hazmat) events, such as hazardous cargo spills from trucks involved in highway accidents. In contrast, these same departments were greatly concerned about their ability to respond to large or multiple acts of terrorism. For instance, terrorism response c...

The railroad industry is being challenged by recent state regulations requiring the disclosure of routing information of trains carrying hazardous materials (hazmat) to the general public. While there is a need to know, the dissemination of such information is contrary to both industry practice and Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) rules. The conundrum is that there needs to be disclosure t...

Emergency response planning in case of a major accident (hazardous material event, nuclear accident) is very important for the protection of the public and workers' safety and health. In this context, several protective actions can be performed, such as, evacuation of an area; protection of the population in buildings; and use of personal protective equipment. The best solution is not unique wh...

Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 2545, Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., 2016, pp. 27–35. DOI: 10.3141/2545-04 The rapid expansion of production of North American petroleum crude oil from shale has led to a significant increase in rail transport of crude oil. Broken rails are frequent causes of train accidents. Ultrasonic rail defe...