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Chemical Occurrences
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EH-5 Classification of Chemical Occurrence Reports
Background
All events at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that could adversely
affect the public or DOE worker health and safety, including those that
are chemical-related, are reported in the DOE Occurrence Reporting and
Processing System (ORPS). Under ORPS, events are filtered through a descriptive
classification scheme to allow better understanding the nature of the
occurrences. Often, however, occurrences involving chemicals or chemical
safety events and conditions are classified under broad categories that
obscure the identification of chemical involvement. EH-HQ has been monitoring
ORPS and extracting all chemical-related occurrences for tracking, analyzing
and trending since August 1992. Much of this work and the classification
of these incidents had been performed by contractors up to the end of
September 1998, following which time all such tasks were assumed by DOE
HQ EH-52. This was consistent with DOE HQ policy at the time of doing
more with the existing federal work force and relying less on contractors.
Contributing to this decision were problems with past reporting where
a lack of clarity for classifying chemical occurrences resulted in numerous
inconsistencies in categorizing accidents and incidents.
An EH HQ committee was subsequently formed to prepare improved guidance
and classification criteria. Occurrences were categorized into four better-defined
classes. Briefly stated, these classes are:
Class 1: Occurrences characterized by serious energy release, injury or exposure requiring medical
treatment, or severe environmental damage.
Class 2: Occurrences characterized by minor injury or exposure, or reportable environmental release.
Class 3: Occurrences that were near misses including notable safety violations.
Class 4: Minor occurrences.
These four classes are defined in detail under the following section on Guidance for Chemical Occurrence
Reporting. Subclasses A, B, C, D, and E were introduced to account for the types of occurrences, i.e., chemical
injury, chemical exposure, environmental, energy release, and "other", respectively.
This page was last updated on January 09, 2007
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