Emergency & Acute Care Medicine

Environmental emergencies

Environmental emergency can be defined as a sudden-onset disaster or accident resulting from natural, technological or human-induced factors, or a combination of these, that cause or threaten to cause severe environmental damage as well as harm to human health and/or livelihoods.

This includes secondary consequences from natural hazards such as earthquakes, storms, floods, tsunamis, wildland fires, landslides and/or man-made disasters such as industrial accidents, transport accidents, chemical spills, oil spills and a multitude of other types of emergencies.