A Statistical Analysis of Hazardous Chemical Fatalities (HCFs) in China between 2015 and 2021

Abstract

To study the occurrence characteristics of hazardous chemical accidents in China, mathematical analysis methods were used to study hazardous chemical fatalities (HCFs) in recent years. This research focused on selecting seven accident characteristics including time characteristics, geographical characteristics, accident type characteristics, hazardous chemical types, hazardous chemical production links, accident cause characteristics, and accident classification. The research results show that: (1) the occurrence of HCFs has obvious time-domain and regional characteristics, the number of casualties on Wednesday working days is the largest, 9:00–11:00 (inclusive) and 15:00–16:00 (inclusive) in a day are the two time periods with the largest number of incidents, the number of hazardous chemical accidents and deaths in economically developed coastal provinces is relatively high; (2) Analyze according to the type of accident statistics, the number of accidents and deaths caused by explosions, poisoning, asphyxiation, and fire are the largest; (3) Analyze according to the type of hazardous chemicals, drugs, compressed gas and liquefied gas, flammable solids, and spontaneous combustion materials, as well as flammable materials when wet are the types of hazardous chemicals that cause the most casualties; (4) Analyze according to the type of hazardous chemical accidents, the number of accidents and deaths caused in the production process is the largest; (5) Analyze according to the type of unsafe behavior by personnel, operator errors, the ignorance of safety, and the ignorance of warnings are the main causes of injuries and deaths caused by hazardous chemicals.; (6) Through single-factor feature analysis and multi-feature comprehensive cross-discussion, countermeasures, and suggestions for preventing and controlling accidents in hazardous chemical enterprises are put forward according to the characteristics of accidents caused by different accident characteristics.