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Exposure to hazardous materials can exist on many levels including at home, as part of your work, or as a result of a major spill, leak or release that can affect a large geographical area. Learn what you can do to better safeguard your personal environment and how to respond if an incident does occur.

Business types that commonly use hazardous materials locally include: hospitals, schools, metal plating and finishing, aircraft manufacturing, public utilities, cold storage companies, fuel industry, communication industry, chemical distributors, research facilities, and high technology firms. Each of these facilities is required to maintain plans for warning, notification, evacuation, and site security.

Level 1HAZMATincident example

Be prepared to seek medical assistance - post the number of the emergency medical services and the poison control center by all telephones. In an emergency situation, you may not have time to look up critical phone numbers. The Washington Poison Control number is 1-800-222-1222.

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Many factors determine the impact of a potential hazardous materials incidents, including quick and solid decision-making by emergency officials, location and type of release, evacuation and shelter-in-place needs, public heath concerns, and relevant economic considerations.

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Additional potential causes of hazardous materials releases may include terrorism incidents and illegal drug labs or dumping. Illegal drug labs present a special concern due to the fact that each must be treated as a chemical hazard site and decontaminated before the property can be used again.

However, most victims of chemical accidents are injured at home. These incidents usually result from lack of knowledge or carelessness in using flammable and combustible liquids. And as many as 500,000 products pose physical or health hazards that can be defined as "hazardous chemicals."

The geographic and economic characteristics of King County make it likely that hazardous materials releases will occur. Our diverse industrial facilities and transportation routes share space with numerous bodies of water, wetlands, environmentally sensitive areas, and densely-populated areas, creating zones of great potential risk for a hazardous materials release.

Hazardous materials are prevalent throughout our region. While industry is the primary user and maintainer of hazardous items, we also have them in our homes, in our cars, and at our places of work and recreation. Hazardous materials move through our region on highways, rail lines, pipelines, and by ship and barge through Puget Sound. When not properly contained, these materials pose a potential risk to life, health, the environment, and property. Hazardous materials may be explosive, flammable, combustible, corrosive, reactive, poisonous, or radioactive, as well as solid, liquid, or gaseous.