Health Authorities have been required since
1993 to have plans in place to respond to public
health aspects of chemical incidents.15 The
need for public health doctors to have a central
role in planning for, and managing chemical
incidents is well recognised.16–18 However, in
this project the health authorities were only
involved in the management of 34 of the 402
incidents. At the time, the primary public
health focus for emergency planning was the
Control of Industrial Major Accident Hazard
(CIMAH) Regulations, 1984,19 recently