By their nature, the manufacture, storage, and transport of chemicals are accidents waiting to happen. Chemicals can be corrosive, toxic, and they may react, often explosively. The impacts of chemical accidents can be deadly, for both human beings and the environment.

Many if not most products we use in everyday life are made from chemicals and thousands of chemicals are used by manufacturing industries to make these products. The source of many of these chemicals is petroleum, which is refined into two main fractions: fuels and the chemical feedstocks that are the building blocks of plastics, paints, dyes, inks, polyester, and many of the products we buy and use every day. Fuels and chemical feedstocks made from petroleum are called organic chemicals. The other important class of chemicals is inorganics, which include acids, caustics, cyanide, and metals. Commercial products made...