3.3. Technological hazards

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The UNISDR definition of technological hazards refers to hazards that stem from technological or industrial conditions. This includes accidents, dangerous procedures, infrastructure deficiencies, and specific human activities that can cause death, injury, disease, or other health impacts, as well as jeopardize property, livelihood, and services, provoke social or economic disorder, and cause environmental damage.

Examples of technological hazards include industrial pollution, nuclear radiation, toxic wastes, dam failures, transport accidents, factory explosions, fires, and chemical spills.

Technological hazards can also result directly from the consequences of an event related to natural hazards, as in the case of the explosions of two nuclear reactors with the associated hazards of radioactivity in Fukushima, Japan, following a tsunami that accompanied an earthquake.

This category of hazards encompasses a very wide range of events and associated potential impacts on health. We shall concentrate here on chemical accidents and ionizing radiation associated with different types of events.

Technological hazards

3.3.1. Chemical accidents
3.3.2. Ionizing radiation