On May 7th, China’s State Administration of Work Safety promulgated the Criteria for Acceptable Individual Risk and Social Risk from Production and Storage of Hazardous Chemicals (Trial) (hereinafter called “Acceptable Risk Criteria” for short) in Notice No.13 of 2014.
The Acceptable Risk Criteria are reference levels against which the risk should be assessed for new establishment, reconstruction, expansion and existing production/storage installations of hazardous chemicals to determine the safety protection distance.
The baseline of acceptable individual risk in China is expressed mathematically as:
Acceptable individual risk baseline value = Minimum age-specific mortality rate × Allowable increase in the risk coefficient
Table 1 – China’s acceptable individual risk baseline
| Protected object | Acceptable individual risk (probability) | |
Installations newly established (per annum) ≤ | Installations in service (per annum) ≤ | |
Low crowd density places (< 30 people): individual or a few exposed persons | 1×10-5 | 3×10-5 |
High crowd density places (≥ 30,<100 people): residential areas, public gathering places | 3×10-6 | 1×10-5 |
Highly sensitive areas: schools, hospitals, nursing homes, etc. Important places: military zones, cultural relics, etc. Extra-high crowd density places (≥100 people): large stadiums, major transport hubs, giant fairground | 3×10-7 | 3×10-6 |
2 baselines were drawn for acceptable social risk and 3 areas were divided, respectively:
Unacceptable region: The risk cannot be tolerated on all accounts, unless the situation is extremely special.
Tolerable region: The risk is not negligible but can be tolerated after comprehensive risk-benefit analysis. It should be kept under review and reduced further if possible.
Acceptable region: The risk is broadly acceptable to the public. Further efforts to reduce risks are not necessary.
Diagram 1 – China’s acceptable social risk
Compared with the draft version issued at the end of last year, the final document includes more practical and feasible guidance. Definitions of the terms are provided in Annex 1, and recommended methods to calculate the safe distance of hazchem production/storage installations are provided in Annex 2 (including accident consequence calculation method, quantitative risk assessment method and hazard index method).
In addition, a closely related regulatory document “Provisions on Safe Production of Hazardous Chemical Enterprises (Draft)” (SAWS Notice No.5 of 2013) is currently under review. Together with the Acceptable Risk Criteria, these two documents will further enhance the supervision on construction and relocation of chemical installations and better implement the overarching Decree 591 on hazardous chemical management in China.
