Accidents in European ports involving chemical substances: Characteristics and trends

Abstract

This paper has studied more than 650 accidents occurred in European ports. The main characteristic of all these accidents is that they involve chemical substances with their consequent risk for society and environment. Accidents occurred in European ports from 1919 until present have been analyzed in detail to understand better their main characteristics and typology. Most of the accidents have occurred in the last decades, being France (29.9%) the country with the higher percentage of accidents followed by UK (25.8%). The most common type of substance involved in the accidents is oil or related products (56.8%) and in most of the accidents a release of material occurred (61.0%), being the latter the type of accident that has increased the most in the last years. The main origin of the accidents is transport (41.7%) and transfer (31.5%), both typical port operations. Impact is the most common cause of accidents in ports (45.1%). Concerning the consequences on population, European accidents seem to have less severe consequences on population than accidents in ports worldwide. The number of accidents increased during the 20th century but it can be observed that there has been a clear reduction in the new century