Sociobehavioral Response To Chemical Hazards: Preparations For And Responses To Acute Chemical Emergencies At The Local Commnunity Level

This is a report summarizing a four-year project running from late 1977 through late 1981. As such, it emphasizes and highlights the general finding and major themes from our work. The report, therefore, does not pretend to give all the details are given in the more specialized publications listed in an appendix to this report. While the problem of chemical emergencies, the topic of this volume, is not peculiar to American society, our field research was confined to the United States and Canada. We do believe our findings and implications have broader applicability than to just our society. However, the test of that belief must come in some future research. What is reported was derived primarily, although not exclusively, from the field work undertaken at the Disaster Research Center (DRC). Accordingly we followed standard DRC policies in reporting any results. Thus, we do not identify particular individuals or officials, and in most cases, not even the specific organizations or localities we contacted in our research. The only exception was when the information about groups or communities was already published, and in the public domain. Field Experiment #2 & 3 are in Final Project Papers 28A- Interview Guide for Specific Emergency Relevant OrganizationsNational Science Foundation under Grant No. PFR 7714445