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2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Living with Chemicals: How to Prevent Their Use for Hostile Purposes and Mitigate Chemical Risks

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Abstract

Chemicals are part of daily life. They are essential, amongst others, to fight disease, produce and preserve food, provide clean water, manufacture goods, and provide energy. But chemicals also can be exploited for hostile purposes. Certain precursor chemicals, for example, can be converted into chemical weapons, prohibited under the Chemical Weapons Convention. Other industrial chemicals can be used directly as improvised weapon given their toxicity or explosiveness. Access to, use and transfers of chemicals therefore are subject to strict controls. Balancing chemical security objectives with ensuring that chemical products can legitimately be use is complicated and requires a multi-stakeholder governance approach. It requires legislation and administrative measures, but also voluntary compliance assurance by the manufacturers and users of chemicals. This paper provides an overview on the chemical risks embedded in today’s society, explains how trends in science, technology and commerce may affect this threat environment, and discusses good practices to prevent misuse and mitigate risks.

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Footnotes
1
The same material was released in 1976 in Seveso, Italy, as the result of an industrial accident leading to large scale contamination of the environment, thousands of dead animals and many people living near the chemical plant showing a range of symptoms. A 2001 study confirmed that TCDD is carcinogenic to humans and associated with cardiovascular- and endocrine-related effects [16]. In 2009, an update found an increase in lymphatic and hematopoietic tissue neoplasms as well as breast cancer [17].
 
2
Only North Korea, Egypt and South Sudan have not taken any action on the treaty; Israel has signed the CWC but has yet to ratify it.
 
3
Poisoning, leukemia, lung cancer, ischaemic heart disease, stroke, intellectual disability, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
 
4
This paper uses the term “terrorism” in a generic sense, relating to any form of terrorism, in whichever manifestation, and recognising that there is no international consensus of the definition and scope of the term “terrorism”.
 
5
Amongst others, these include: Chap. 19 of Agenda 21 adopted by the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, ILO Conventions No. 170 on Safety in the Use of Chemicals at Work and No. 174 on the Prevention of Major Industrial Accidents, Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, Rotterdam Convention on the Prior Informed Consent Procedure for Certain Hazardous Chemicals and Pesticides in International Trade, Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, Globally Harmonized System for the Classification and Labelling of Chemicals; within the EU: Seveso III Directive.
 
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Metadata
Title
Living with Chemicals: How to Prevent Their Use for Hostile Purposes and Mitigate Chemical Risks
Author
Ralf Trapp
Copyright Year
2017
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62108-1_18

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