Introduction
Chemical incidents that lead to human exposure present an
important public health challenge both nationally and globally.
These incidents can range from an obvious chemical release,
e.g. a leak or spill, to a less immediately apparent event such as
contamination of a product.
The international community, through the World Health
Assembly, has recognized the need to strengthen surveillance
for chemical incidents. There are three main reasons for doing
this. First, the continuing rapid growth and globalization
of the chemicals industry means that chemical incidents will
continue to be a problem. Second, chemical incidents may have
an impact beyond their original location, in some cases crossing
national borders. For example, in north-west Romania cyanide
was released from a gold mine into the local river system, leading
to fish deaths in three countries (1). The global sale of a
brand of dialysis filters contaminated with perfluoroisobutylene
is another example. This led to deaths in Colombia, Croatia,