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UPDATED GUIDANCE FOR RISK MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS AVAILABLE
Release Date: 04/22/99
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FOR RELEASE: THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 1999
UPDATED GUIDANCE FOR RISK MANAGEMENT PROGRAMS AVAILABLE
EPA issued updated guidance to owners and operators of facilities covered under the Risk Management Program rule. This guidance, “Risk Management Program Guidance for Offsite Consequence Analysis, ” replaces the “RMP Offsite Consequence Analysis Guidance” published in May, 1996. The updated guidance provides a simple methodology for conducting offsite consequence analysis, and incorporates several new features not available in the original version. Facilities covered by these requirements under the Clean Air Act section 112(r) include those that handle, manufacture, use or store certain toxic and flammable substances. More specific information on facilities and chemicals covered is available in EPA’s “General Guidance for Risk Management Programs” (40 CFR Part 68), available from EPA’s web page at: www.epa.gov/ceppo. Offsite consequence analysis (OCA) includes a worst-case release and alternative release scenarios. The worst-case release scenario is the largest quantity of a regulated substance that could be released from a single vessel or process line failure that results in the greatest distance to an endpoint. An endpoint is defined as the distance a toxic vapor cloud, heat from a fire, or blast wave from an explosion could travel before dissipating to the point that serious injuries from short-term exposures will no longer occur. Alternative release scenarios are those incidents that are more likely to occur than the worst-case scenario and that will reach an endpoint offsite, unless no such scenario exists. The guidance provides general reference tables of distances, applicable to most of the regulated toxic substances, and chemical-specific tables of distances for anhydrous ammonia liquefied under pressure, aqueous ammonia, chlorine and sulfur dioxide. This guidance also provides reference tables of distances for consequences of fires and explosions of flammable substances. The use of this guidance is optional. Covered facilities that have already performed OCA calculations using the original (May, 1996) version of this guidance may continue to use those calculations in forthcoming RMP submissions if desired. Software that performs the calculations described in the guidance, known as RMP*Comp, can be downloaded from EPA’s web page at: www.epa.gov/ceppo. This guidance does not contain information about the issue associated with posting of OCA data on the Internet and other means of public access to OCA data.
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