Évaluation du risque par les professionnels de la santé et les équipes de secours lors d’incidents chimiques.

Context: The literature review highlights that joint preparation and training of first aid responders is necessary to deal with a major chemical incident. Improved knowledge of exposure assessments makes it possible to estimate the risk and adjust immediate measures. The aim of this paper is to summarize recommendations for assessing exposure during chemical incidents that require emergency responses. Actions allowing the chemical contamination to be better anticipated and health protection to be optimized were analyzed.

Methodology: A review of the literature was conducted, and research questions were formulated using the PECO method. The PRISMA method was used to select the literature.

Results and discussion: The selected papers (n=16) show that preparation for chemical incidents in terms of individual and collective protective equipment, and knowledge of the risk assessment process remain lacking. We propose training to master the steps of risk assessment. Our analysis also points out the importance of monitoring the state of the environment after a chemical incident, allowing adjusted measures to protect the health of the exposed population and vulnerable groups in particular. This monitoring must be accurate and dynamic to provide realistic recommendations during the intervention phase.

Conclusions: All first-aid responders and health workers knowing the risk assessment process should result in improvements: in the use of protective measures in time and space, the delimitation of exposure to contamination, and the characterization of the risk.