Abstract
Severe fire and explosion accidents at chemical plants have recently occurred in Japan. Nevertheless, few studies are reported on recognition of physical risks. In this study, we performed a questionnaire survey for inhabitants (n = 121) living near a chemical plant where a fire accident had occurred. This study compares perceived risk of "heat and fire" with that of "toxic gases" by employing Wilcoxon signed-rank and Mann-Whitney U tests. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests show that "toxic gases," which are invisible and hard to understand how risky phenomenon, are perceived as a more serious risk than "heat and fire", which cause not only harm but also losses. U tests show that the distances from the plant to inhabitant's houses had little influence on perceived risk. Besides, inhabitants who have children less than 15 years perceived unacceptable risk of a fire at the plant since they seriously perceived risk of "toxic gases." From these results, even at the same accident, physical risks having different characteristics affect different variables and should not to be treated equally.
