Soil protection

To protect CERN sites from accidental soil pollution, procedures are defined for the safe usage, handling, temporary storage, and elimination of potentially polluting substances, in accordance with the relevant Host States' regulations and CERN Safety Rules on chemical agents. An inventory of the quantities and types of chemical agents present on-site is continuously updated in the CERN-developed tool CERES. Consolidation of retention means and inspections are carried out in association with the risk severity scores of each agent.

As a result of incidents in the past, some CERN sites are considered as polluted today. The polluted sites on Swiss territory are registered in the Geneva public database (SITG) and are followed-up. For these sites, adequate measures are implemented whenever excavation works are planned and carried out.

SITG polluted sites

SITG with the polluted sites located on the Swiss part of the Meyrin site.