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Aria newsflash – Mixing of products
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The accidents presented in this flash involve chemical reactions between incompatible products inadvertently placed into contact with one another. Encountered in all types of activities, such accidents are frequent and occur not only during the delivery of chemical products (wrong destination reservoir, etc.), during handling or cleaning operations (mistaken chemical substance, simultaneous use of 2 incompatible products), but also when emergency interventions deploy inappropriate resources for the type of accident at hand (use of water on a fire fuelled by reactive metals).
These accidents sometimes reflect equipment malfunctions and, in all instances, organisational breakdowns (inadequate identification of substances, procedures that are missing, insufficient or ignored, lack of controls, human error, etc.), with such anomalies being regularly reported in the ARIA database.
Beyond the economic losses caused, the resulting discharges are potentially hazardous to both human health and the environment. The prevention of this type of accident at the source relies primarily on an accurate identification of substances and their incompatibilities (chemical or material-related).