A Brief Review on Hazard Material Management and Incident Response for Eastern Asia Countries

Chemicals bring us many conveniences as well as high living standards through many chemical products. However, they were also threatening our daily life owing to their dangerous properties during production processes and abundant applications. Since the Bhopal disaster in 1984, there are many stunting events or international pollution incidents that caused by the leaks, fires, and explosions of dangerous chemicals. Those events already attracted many attentions from general public as well as international societies and organizations. Many developed countries had their eyes on the safety of chemicals, from responsibility, research and development, regulations, toward emergency responses with scientific knowledge and applications. Many international norms are discussing those, including GHS(Global Harmonized System), NIOSH(National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health)、REACH (Regulation for Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals), (UN Strategic Approach to International Chemical Management, SAICM), WHO( World Health Organization) and WSSD(World Summit on Sustainable Development. This paper briefly reviewed the management and response measures and regulation developed by Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China as a comparison of development trends for the past decades.

Keywords: Chemical management, Response, Hazardous Material (HAZMAT), Development trend