Since the chemicals involved in various economic sectors, with the possible impact on human
health and environment, the management of hazardous substances is receiving greater attention from
all sectors. International organizations including the United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development(UNCED), Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency(USEPA), and European Union(EU) have developed chemical
systems to manage chemical hazards. Although currently in Taiwan, the National Environmental
Protection Administration, the Ministry of Labor and the Fire Agency have managed the chemical
hazards according to the scope of the jurisdiction, however, the regulated hazardous substances for
each Government agency are not the same, which leads to insufficient information for planning
preventive measures. Therefore, this study was aimed to develop a demonstration database for
Geographic Information System of hazardous chemicals in a Science Park. This system is to provide a
convenient platform for reporting hazards from factories. Based on complete chemical databases, this
system can be used to develop disaster prevention measures and risk management for occupational
inspection agencies.
In this study, domestic and international references of the management of hazardous substances were reviewed. A regional Geographic Information System Database of chemical hazardous materials
was established in the Central Taiwan Science Park(CTSP) through collecting opinions from meetings
of experts and factory representatives. A hazardous chemicals reporting platform was established, there
were 50 plants uploaded their chemical database and 220 on-site examinations were performed by
experts. A total of more than 7,800 chemical data and more than 2,000 kinds of hazardous substances
were collected in the database. Wherein, the most-used organic solvent was toluene; the mostused
specific chemical was tetramethyl ammonium; the most-used class IV toxic material was butyl
acrylate.
The functions of the systematic chemical database and Geographic Information System of
hazardous materials established in this study, for government administrative units, include integrating
hazardous material resources, disaster prevention resources, and the environmental impact assessments,
etc. For the factories, the functions include to set up hierarchical management of hazardous chemicals,
to make hazards control measures and emergency response plans, etc. There is also a wide range of
the extended applications which includes the management of raw materials feeding, chemical storage,
and waste chemical recovery. The application of this system will be promoted to other regional
organizations or factories.