Ordinance
on Protection against Major Accidents
(Major Accidents Ordinance, MAO)

¹ An es­tab­lish­ment com­prises in­stall­a­tions as defined in Art­icle 7 para­graph 7 EPA which have closely re­lated op­er­a­tions and are in close prox­im­ity to each oth­er (op­er­at­ing area).

² …²¹

³ The haz­ard po­ten­tial is the sum of the ef­fects which could arise from the quant­it­ies and prop­er­ties of the sub­stances, pre­par­a­tions, spe­cial wastes, or­gan­isms or dan­ger­ous goods in ques­tion.²²

⁴ A ma­jor ac­ci­dent is an ex­cep­tion­al event oc­cur­ring in an es­tab­lish­ment, on a trans­port route or in a pipeline in­stall­a­tion which has sig­ni­fic­ant ef­fects:²³

a.

out­side the op­er­at­ing area;

b.

on or near the trans­port route;

c.²⁴

near the pipeline in­stall­a­tion.

⁵ The risk is de­term­ined by the ex­tent of the pos­sible harm to the pub­lic or dam­age to the en­vir­on­ment res­ult­ing from ma­jor ac­ci­dents and the like­li­hood of their oc­cur­rence.