National recording of environmental incidents in Scotland

One of the main problems in determining the environmental status of a territory is the common failure to accurately record the occurrence of environmental incidents. All too often control of pollution is the responsibility of various independent central and local government departments without overall cooperation and recording of incidents. If an official recording mechanism is not in place no determination of the number of environmental incidents that occur in a given period of time can be determined, no relation of connected incidents can be made, no lessons can be learned and passed on to all those working in the pollution control field, and no assessment of improved environmental standards can be achieved. In Scotland for the past 3 years a central system for recording environmental health incidents has been in place and many benefits from this administrative arrangement are already evident. The implementation, management benefits and results obtained from the programme are given and suggestions are made as to how this programme could be extended internationally.