Wharton's Risk Management Center Issues Accident Analysis from RMP Data


		AcuSafe -> February 2000 Newsletter
		Wharton's Risk Management Center Issues Accident Analysis from RMP Data

Under a cooperative agreement with U.S. EPA/CEPPO, the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania has issued a report summarizing chemical accident data from the June 1999 RMP submissions. This report is available on AcuSafe for your convenience.

Work Starts even Before Submission
Extensive interviews with plant-level and corporate managers responsible for submitting the RMP data were undertaken by Wharton staff between November 1998 and June 1999, to determine whether there were ambiguities in the minds of facility managers as to what data were required. The primary difficulties were with understanding the requirements for the OCA, not the accident reporting.

Although it was anticipated that 66,000 sites would submit RMP data, the number of facilities actually filing was, 14,500, with 1,145 of these facilities reporting some 1,913 accidents over the five-year period of interest.

According to the authors: "Our sole interest in this paper is to present descriptive statistics associated with RMP*Info and not to undertake analytic studies to determine precursors of accidents or their sequellae. They also reported, "...we cannot state whether the incidence rate of accidents has increased or decreased over the last five years."

Some of the raw statistics include:

33 - Onsite Fatalities,
40 - Public Responder Deaths,
1,897 - Onsite Injuries,
$1Billion - Total onsite damage,
192 - Most frequent Industry Code - Oil Refineries.

Offsite injuries appear to be all over the chart. Our concern is that it may be easy to draw incorrect conclusions. Obviously, further data analysis is needed.

This paper is only the beginning of the analysis of the informational value of the data collected under the RMP Rule. AcuTech News will alert you to the reports as they become available.