Environmental incident management

An environmental incident is any event (usually acute) where public exposure(s) to chemical, other environmental hazards, actually or potentially causes adverse health impacts. Incidents may be small-scale and short-lived, or complex and protracted over days, weeks or even months. Incident examples include chemical/radiation releases, or extreme weather events such as flooding.

Our role

Public Health Wales supports the multi-agency response to such incidents in order to assess and manage any linked public health risks. During an incident, we will:

• Assess the impact on population health to inform the multi-agency response;
• Liaise with other expert agencies, as appropriate, to ensure the provision of proportionate and timely evidence-based advice;
• Recommend measures to protect public health and mitigate the effects of an incident,
• Contribute to a range of multi-agency partnerships such as the Strategic and Recovery Co-ordinating Groups, Scientific and Technical Advice Cell (STAC), Air Quality Cell (AQC) and media cell;
• Advise on the effective communications of public health risks;
• Analyse and evaluate the response proposed by other agencies in terms of the likely impact on public health;
• Facilitate epidemiological follow-up of affected populations and communities as necessary.

For small-scale incidents we will convene an Environmental Incident Management Team (IMT), in line with guidance we have produced, to facilitate co-ordination of the response to protect public health.

For all incidents, we will to apply the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP) doctrine of ‘working together-saving lives-reducing harm’ and the Joint Decision Model. This is to ensure a consistent approach to incident risk communication, assessment and management and in turn, the fluid escalation of incidents when appropriate.

Alongside other partner agencies, we play a key role in planning and preparing for these sorts of events. This typically involves us contributing to development of emergency plans and testing procedures through regular training and exercising.

More information

To address some of the operational aspects of incident management-related decontamination issues and to support our partner agencies we have developed chemical decontamination guidance for Health Boards in consultation with Welsh Government and health board.