- Department:Chemicals Administration Ministry of Environment
A ground breaking ceremony was held on 20 March 2018 for the Southern Training Facility for the Shipment of Toxic Chemical Substances and Material Dispatch Center. EPA Deputy Minister Tzi-Chin Chang and the president of National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Mr. Ching-Yu Yang, were the hosts for the ceremony. Upon completion, this will be Taiwan’s first training facility for hazardous chemical incidents. The facility will provide training for toxic disasters and improve the ability of response teams to handle such disasters, as well as shorten the time for preparing equipment and responding to incidents.
The Southern Training Facility for the Shipment of Toxic Chemical Substances and Laboratory will be located on the campus of National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology. The facility will consist of two six-story buildings connected by a bridge. The total floor space for the buildings is approximately 5,000 square meters with an outside area of approximately 2,000 square meters. The space will include training rooms for personal safety equipment, detection equipment, laboratory incident response, decontamination and repairing leaky equipment. In addition, there will be a semi-outdoor training area and material storage. The chemical substances used to simulate various incidents are not actual toxic chemical substances and are not hazardous. The project is expected to be finished by 2019.
Once finished, the Southern Training Facility will be available for personnel handling toxic chemical substances, shipping companies, disposal personnel involved in shipping substances, port service personnel, joint defense organizations, personnel involved in factory operations and shipment, laboratory maintenance personnel and other disaster relief personnel, both domestic and international. It is estimated that the facility can train around 2,000 people annually, improving safety for both transporting toxic chemical substances and disaster response.
Source: EPA Environmental Policy Monthly, p.11, Vol. XXI, Issue 4, 2018
