Chemical Spill Guided Tour: Part 6

In an especially serious kind of chemical accident, a toxic gas escapes into the atmosphere. In 1984, this is what happened during a terrible accident in Bhopal, India. A cloud of methyl isocyanate accidentally escaped from a chemical plant, killing about 4,000 people according to official figures.

Emergency responders and planners need to know when this kind of accident is possible and how bad the consequences might be. The CAMEO software suite includes ALOHA, a program that can help people predict the extent of the area that could be affected by hazardous chemical releases, including toxic gas clouds, fires, and explosions.

Above is a toxic threat zone plot from ALOHA, which is displayed on a map in MARPLOT (CAMEO's companion mapping program). The red, orange, and yellow zones represents the areas where the toxic chemical concentration might rise to levels high enough to be hazardous to people.