This study essentially concerns refrigeration installations using ammonia as a refrigerant. However, to better understand and to place the risks associated with these installations in perspective, quantified information has also been collected on numerous accidents, both French or foreign, in other industrial or agricultural activities and the field of transport. The processing of these data allows some comparisons to be made using general indicators (geographic distribution, nature, accident causes, and consequences, etc.). Furthermore, while the nature and significance of the hazards presented are notably different, the case studies bring into play liquid, gaseous ammonia or its aqueous solutions. These various phases can be presented for a given activity or during an accident (normal physical state of the product, transfer of risks or pollution during an intervention in a normal or accidental situation, etc.). Excluding individual cases that are primarily associated with the type and the consequences of particular accidents, the ammoniacal solutions used as liquid fertilizers are not taken into account, however. The sample studied consists of:
- 91 French refrigeration accidents (from January 1980 to December 1994),
- 44 foreign refrigeration accidents (January 1958 to December 1992),
- 71 French accidents excluding refrigeration (August 1968 to December 1994),
- 150 foreign accidents excluding refrigeration (July 1959 to May 1994)
The first approach is then completed by a detailed presentation of a few representative and particularly significant accidents regarding feedback (cause of the accident,
the sequence of events, consequences, etc.).
A biographical study and a query of the ARIA database enabled us to identify 356 accidents, from July 1959 to December 1994, involving ammonia and/or its aqueous solutions. The compiled sample is very diverse owing to the diversity of the sources of information, the kind and size of the events, as well as the more or less high level of detail of the information gathered.
The following table thus shows that 14% to 32% of the accidents studied generally lack information (origin of the toxic leaks, possible release of ammonia during a fire or
following an explosion, consequences of the accident, etc.).
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