To design good policies for managing accident risk in petrochemical industry requires a sound understanding on the accident risks in the petrochemical industry. The authors estimated the parameters of the distributions of the frequencies and consequences of accident risks in the petrochemical industry by using Hierarchical Bayesian Analysis, based on the information of 1479 accidents in petrochemical industry from 2006 to 2015 collected from multiple sources. It was concluded that the frequency of the accidents in China’s petrochemical industry follows Poisson distribution with its mean being 156.00, the fatalities of the accidents follows generalized Pareto distribution with its scale parameter being 1.40 and its shape parameter being 0.36. The parameters of the distributions of the frequencies and consequences of accident risks vary sharply across regions.

From a social-psychological perspective, this paper studies people’s protective behavior in response to health risks posed by air pollution. A questionnaire survey was conducted in Haidian, Chaoyang, Xicheng and Fengtai Districts in Beijing, and a sample of 993 respondents based on quota sampling techniques was collected. Based on Health Belief Model, ordinary least square regression was used for examining determinants of protective behaviors. The key finding is that the predictors of the adaptation behavior are consistent with the basic constructs for explaining health protective behavior in the health domain, which are perceived level of risk, perceived barriers, and perceived effectiveness. The result supports the thought of borrowing knowledge from the health domain to the environmental domain in designing policy instruments to cope with environmental risks.

The authors used media content analysis to study reports on climate-related issues from four quality newspapers (New York Times, The Guardian, The Australian, and China Daily). The news media reporting was analyzed, including coverage, frame, and source on international climate negotiation during the COPs from 1997 to 2012. Reporting attitude of China in New York Times, The Guardian, and The Australian for the period of Dec. 2009 to Jun. 2013 was also investigated. Results show that high coverage appears during conferences where important accord, agreement, or declaration are made; the frame used is well aligned with their stand points in international climate negotiations; and the reporting attitude toward China in New York Times, The Guardian, and The Australian is overall negative, but positive on domestic policy and international cooperation.

The authors give a fairly thorough review on papers published in the recent twenty years related to public risk perception on urban air pollution. It summarized major factors affecting the public’s risk perception, including the characteristics of risk itself, peripheral environmental conditions, exposure routes, socio-demographic factors, and other individual characteristics. Specifically, the public’s perceived risk towards air pollution is weakly correlated with scientific air quality data released officially and in media. Instead, it is affected by their proximity to pollution sources, vegetation coverage, physical experiences, health status and anecdotes. Females, those with respiratory diseases, and those more educated are concerned more about air pollution and perceived a higher risk. Socioeconomic factors also affect the public’s perceived level of risks. Besides, this paper summarizes the quantitative and qualitative methods used to study perceived risk towards air pollution. Finally, future research directions are identified including how the public perceive the causal link between air pollution and health effects, effect of media and trust, and effect of risk perception on behavior.

Based on the study of chlorinated paraffins (CPs) production and consumption sectors investigation and literature research, the emission of short chain chlorinated paraffins (SCCPs) was reported. The emission inventory of SCCPs was listed and the emission of SCCPs in China during 2007 to 2011 was estimated. The total emission of China’s 2011 SCCPs is 1788.67 ton, the emissions to the atmosphere reaches 498.32 ton, the water discharge reaches 1290.35 ton; the result also shows the largest emission is the use of processing of metal cutting fluid. If there are no further steps to control the emission of SCCPs, it would reach 2562.51 ton in 2016, which would pose a huge threat to the ecological environment and human health.