Texas and Houston-area officials say they may learn something from a new federal program to help guard against accidental releases of toxic chemicals into the air, but believe they are probably already doing many things the program will suggest.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unveiled a "guidance document" last week to help states and localities prevent and respond to toxic air releases that pose immediate threats. A meeting for state officials will be held next February in Dallas on how to put the EPA's voluntary suggestions into effect, EPA spokeswoman Karen Brown said Monday.

EPA created the program after deciding to get more involved in toxic air emergencies - traditionally an area left largely to state and local officials - following the toxic air release that killed 1,500 people in Bhopal , India, last December. The program has special significance along the Texas Gulf Coast, where chemical plants handle large amounts of toxic substances.

A report published this week said Texas industries, most in the Houston area, told state officials they accidentally released millions of pounds of potentially dangerous chemicals in the first nine months of 1985, including almost 40 tons of known or suspected cancer-causing substances.

Sam Crowther, chemical section chief of the Texas Air Control Board's permits division, said he had not seen the new EPA guidance document, but thinks many of the voluntary measures the program will recommend have already been taken in Texas. But he added he expects to strengthen state policies by incorporating some of EPA's recommendations.

In 1978, Texas began reviewing new and modified plants for the possibility of disastrous releases of toxic chemicals, Crowther said. "For some years, we've been giving (permit) applicants a good run to get rid of the life-threatening aspects" of their plant designs.

State regulations exempt old plants from those requirements, but most facilities that handle "significant quantities" of toxic chemicals have asked the Air Control Board to review their permits because of plant modifications in recent years, he said.

"It's impossible not to have (accidental) emissions, but it is possible to design systems so that when you do have an accident, there's not massive death and destruction beyond the (plant's) property line," Crowther said. Among actions the Air Control Board has required is the use of smaller tanks so smaller amounts of acutely toxic substances are on hand at any given time.

A Bhopal -type accident could happen in Texas, but a major reason it has not occurred, Crowther said, is that employees realize the catastrophic potential of the chemicals they handle and that a disaster would affect them first.

The EPA guidance document urges officials to find out which chemicals are handled in their areas and features ways to measure amounts in accidental air releases and estimate how far the danger would reach from a plant.

EPA officials plan next month to reveal a list of more than 400 toxic chemicals that could pose immediate public danger if accidentally released into the air, with a "profile" of each chemical.

Herbert McKee, environmental chief of the Houston Health Department, said city officials "know generally what goes on in plants and what they do. We can't identify every individual compound they have, make, process or store."

Local officials' attention to the EPA recommendations, however, will not be "a question of starting us off on something that's new," McKee said. "If they give us more information and better ways to deal with this, that's fine. But we're not sitting here in a vacuum."

The chance of a Bhopal -type accident here is "extremely remote," McKee said.

That was echoed by Allison Peirce, Harris County pollution control director, who said there are numerous accidental air releases of toxic chemicals here, but immediate health problems they produce are mainly confined to plant workers.

He added, however, that his department "has never had the manpower to look at all those (accidental release) reports" companies make.