Conduct Environmental Assessment

The next step in the materials selection process is to discount the forms of corrosion that are unlikely to occur. For example, if the application being designed will not be exposed to a flowing fluid, then erosion-corrosion would not be considered. To determine the more likely forms that will occur, the analyst should examine the factors responsible for initiating each corrosion mode and then determine which ones are present in the application. Chapters 6 and 7 provide descriptions that could be quite useful for this phase of the selection process. 

After candidate materials have been selected, the next step is to analyze the environment in which a system will operate. When considering the operational environment many may automatically consider exposure to atmospheric, industrial, or marine conditions as the corrosion inducing factors. While important, such a global or macro view may be too limited since conditions imposed by the configuration and operation of a system may result in the formation of corrosion cells and of particularly corrosive microenvironments. 

For instance, the buildup of scale within storage tanks and piping may result in situations where corrosive agents can accumulate and accelerate a very vicious hidden corrosion process. One particular example of such conditions that became extremely important after the energy crisis of the 1970s is what is called corrosion under insulation (CUl). However, the same problem exist in maybe a less severe fashion for structural details used in the construction of a system including lap joints, gaskets, and enclosed places that cannot be accessed. 

4 Evaluate Materials Based on Potential Corrosion Failure Modes 

Once the candidate materials and the environmental conditions have been determined, the analyst must investigate the potential for one or more of the many forms of corrosion to become active. At this point in the process the designer should have at least one candidate material to consider and a listing of potential corrosion modes in the anticipated environmental conditions. Since the scope of the analysis has been defined, one can assess whether any of the potential forms of corrosion may become active when the candidate material is subjected to the operational environment. 

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EC (Environment Canada) (1992) Guidelines for conducting environmental assessments for priority substances under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Final Report, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. 

The Office of Environmental Programs conducts environmental assessments and reviews (including the National Environmental Policy Act process) for nonrenewable and renewable energy activities during each stage of the offshore energy development planning process. These assessments... 

EPR shall be responsible for conducting environmental assessments as needed. This includes, but may not be limited to an Environmental Impact Assessment. 

Dr Georg Geisler is a product safety expert and modeller working with RCC Ltd, a Contract Research Organisation based in Basel, Switzerland. In this function, he conducts environmental risk assessments of pesticides, biocides and other chemicals, as well as safety assessments for pesticide residues in the food chain. In 2003, Georg Geisler earned his Ph.D. on environmental life-cycle assessment of pesticides at ETH Zurich. In 1999, he had received a Diploma in environmental chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller University, Jena, Germany. 

The analytical procedures applied at Level 2 may be extensions of the Level 1 procedures. In most cases, however, Information developed at Level 1 will provide background for selection and utilization of more sophisticated sampling and analysis techniques. Because Level 2 analyses must positively identify the materials in sources which have already been found to cause adverse environmental effects, these analyses are the most critical of all three levels. It is equally important, however, that the analyses be conducted in an information-effective manner. This is because increasing specificity and accuracy result in cost escalations which are, at best, exponential rather than proportional. Due to the multiplicity of analytical techniques required and the potential for unnecessarily high expenditures, the analyses must be conducted with a full awareness of the information requirements of the environmental assessment program. 

Innovative programs are also available to help home residences reduce exposure to toxic substances. The Master Home Environmentalist program of the American Lung Association trains volunteers to visit homes and conduct a Home Environmental Assessment. Home residences are encouraged to make changes to reduce exposures to toxic substance. A major focus of this program is on reducing asthma in children. 

Authors have stressed the importance of LCAs for comparing environmental and energy impacts, outlined the difficulties encountered in conducting such assessments, and provided examples of past LCAs. They addressed additional issues and also examined the usefulness of LCAs in formulating public policy. When a given pollutant arises at multiple sites, life-cycle impact analysis is often replaced by life-cycle inventory analysis (Graedel et al., 1995). 

In the past, major new chemicals have often had R D lead times of seven to ten years. In such cases, some aspects of newly instituted environmental assessments (e.g. a portion of the time required for long-term chronic toxicity tests) can be conducted in parallel with other R D activities. In other cases such as batch-lot production activities, new test requirements simply extend the R D cycle for the length of the test program. 

The PMN review process has evolved over time within the constraints set by TSCA. An important constraint is that submitters are required to furnish only test data already in their possession (if any) and are not required to conduct a battery of tests as a precondition for approval. This generalization holds true for basic chemical property data as well as toxicity data, and it is the main reason why TSCA has been such a powerful impetus for developing estimation methods for many of the parameters needed in environmental assessment. To illustrate how extreme the situation is, in one study of more than 8,000 PMNs for class 1 chemical substances (i.e., those for which a specific chemical structure can be drawn) that were received from 1979 through 1990,Lynch et al. (1991) found only 300 that contained any of the property data noted earlier as needed for environmental assessment. The U.S. is unique among industrialized nations in requiring its assessors to work in the virtual absence of test data. 

The next step under the act is DOE s initial nomination of five locations for site characterization, based on a consideration of the guidelines and the environmental assessments to be prepared for each of the five nominated sites, followed by a recommendation of three candidate sites to the President for his approval. The DOE had intended to complete these actions in the summer of 1983 in order to permit the conduct of a sufficiently thorough site characterization program at each site to support the presidential recommendation of a site for the first repository by March 31,1987, as required by the act. The act requires that for each site under consideration, DOE conduct public hearings to solicit recommendations on issues to be addressed in the environmental assessment and in any site characterization plan to be used if the site is approved by the President. The specific date and location for these hearings will be established after consultation with state representatives. 

The Canadian new chemicals program uses two chemical inventories, the Domestic Substances List (DSL) and the Non-Domestic Substances List (NDSL). The DSL includes substances that were, between January 1, 1984, and December 31, 1986, in Canadian commerce, used for manufacturing purposes, or manufactured in or imported into Canada.17 It contains about 23,000 substances. One of the initiatives in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA, 1999) requires the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Health to categorize (Section 73, CEPA 1999) and then if necessary, conduct screening assessments (Section 74, CEPA 1999) of substances listed on the DSL to determine whether they are toxic or capable of becoming toxic as defined in the Act. The NDSL is a list of substances not on DSL but in commerce elsewhere in the world.18 The NDSL contains more than 58,000 entries. 

Indirect exposure assessment, both human and environmental, starts with emission data and a prediction of the fate of chemicals in the environment and the resulting concentrations in different environmental compartments. Foster et al. (2005) outlined 5 steps in a strategy to conduct exposure assessment of complex mixtures, consisting of many different components, such as gasoline. These steps, as outlined below, are also relevant when assessing exposure to less complex mixtures. 

The third and final aspect of the precautionary principle refers to the burden of proof for improving damage to health and the environment. It is typically regulators who are responsible for conducting risk assessments and ensuring a high level of health and environmental protection. The new EU chemicals policy seeks to reverse the burden of proof , requiring companies to do risk assessments and thereby demonstrate safe use for all chemicals (Section 2.4.1). 

For purposes of comparison, an analysis was conducted to assess what options might be selected to achieve comparable release reduction and exposure reduction objectives in the absence of the existing regulatory constraints. To avoid double counting in this analysis, a specific alternative was selected for those options involving multiple alternatives. The alternative options selected were 3b for FCU fines recovery, 5c for secondary seals, and lib for LDAR. The goal in this analysis was to attain the desired environmental targets— release reduction or exposure reduction—at a lesser cost. 

When complete health or environmental data are lacking, it may be necessary to conduct further assessments for a site or facility as the data become available. A major reason for preparing a health assessment is to determine the need for health effects... 

The training of professional personnel in the risk assessment process is an ongoing activity at EPA. However, classroom training is only a partial answer to EPA s risk assessment dilemma. It lessens, but has not eliminated, the pressure of EPA to review technical reports with less experienced professional personnel. The development of a computer software system, Risk Assistant, to assist environmental personnel in conducting risk assessments and reviewing assessments generated by contractors, represents a complementary approach to increasing the technical quality and consistency of risk assessments. 

A baseline risk assessment is conducted to assess the potential human health and environmental impacts associated with soil contamination. The primary exposure pathways evaluated for explosives contaminated surface soils are dust inhalation, soil ingestion, and dermal absorption. Reasonable Maximum Exposure (RME) concentrations are based on the 95% upper confidence interval (UCI) on the arithmetic mean of soil sampling data. The land use scenarios quantitatively evaluated may include industrial and residential use, utilizing EPA standard default exposure parameters. 

DOE prepares Environmental Assessments, and Environmental Impact Statements when appropriate, for those major field projects, Air, water, and other environmental monitoring, as required to demonstrate compliance with NEPA and applicable permits, is conducted as part of this need that data is made available to other tasks for various analyses and decisions ... 

Did poor environmental management and urban planning contribute to the devastation caused by the tsunami in Thailand Thailand has an Environmental Protection and Quality Act (1975) and a more comprehensive and detailed Enhancement and Conservation of National Environmental Quality Act (1992) in place. The latter established a National Environmental Board that is mandated to prepare a policy and plan for the enhancement and conservation of the environment. It provides criteria and procedures to conduct environmental impact assessments (EIAs), as well as detailing the EIA reporting requirements. Some 500 EIA reports are prepared yearly of which around 20 percent are approved without conditions. (UNEP 2005 Weisman, 2005)... 

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