Environmental safety, need

Some provisions of other legislative enactments regulating radiation and environmental safety need to be revised, for instance, the Water Code of the Russian Federation and the Law On the Radiation Safety of the Ihiblic . 

Safety and environmental policies need to be established and approved by executive management. Practices for implementing the policy need to be established, documented, implemented, and evaluated for continued suitability and effectiveness. These practices have to be planned, organized, and controlled so that they achieve their purpose. 

There has been considerable interest recently in the migration of long-lived nuclides involving technetium. The behavior of technetium in groundwater, sorption and permeation under subterranean conditions needs to be studied for the purpose of assessing environmental safety in connection with the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. Chemical and physicochemical data on technetium under such conditions are necessary. 

Good Laboratory Practice is a quality system that is tailored to the needs of the modem laboratories. Its principles are very close to the principles of the modem quality management systems like ISO 9000 and ISO 17025. However, GLP is specific to the non-clinical health and environmental safety studies, it covers physical and chemical test systems, and gives emphasis to biological test systems. It is of utmost importance to note that GLP principles were set out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and after being modified they were adopted by the Emopean Union and are now the Commission Directive 1999/11/EC. 

A key element of the mission of the CSDP is to eliminate safely the aging U.S. stockpile of chemical agents and munitions. The Army has in place safety and occupational and environmental health programs at chemical agent disposal facilities that have been visited by the Stockpile Committee (NRC, 2001). The committee found these programs to be comprehensive, professional, and adequate to meet the occupational health and safety needs of the CSDP workers as well as to protect the public and the environment (NRC, 2001). 

For example, once implemented, the European Commission s new chemicals policy REACH (Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals) -endorsed in 2003 - would require manufacturers and importers of over one ton per year of any chemical substance to gather information on the properties, hazards, and use of that substance, and submit the data to the European Chemicals Agency. The Agency would then determine if the chemical substance needed to be further regulated, restricted, or banned from use. It is estimated that about 30,000 existing chemicals produced in or imported into Europe would be subject to REACH. Key objectives of the European Commission s initiative on the reformulation of chemicals policy are to raise human and environmental safety levels as well as to simplify and standardize the current legislation. 

Perhaps ironically, it was a herbicide—aminotriazole—which started the present regulatory trend and resulted most recently in rather specific government demands for environmental chemistry data to permit the registration of new herbicides and reregistration of old favorites (44). Modern society is being pushed inexorably toward a most serious dilemma the requirement for pest control vs the need for human and environmental safety. As we have seen in just the few examples of this Chapter, much— perhaps most—of our uncertainty arises from ignorance of the forces which act upon chemicals in the environment. Time is growing short for chemists to learn and apply the scientific fundamentals of the photochemical, microbial, and transportive phenomena which have been observed for centuries to influence us and our environment. 

Where records are retained centrally for use by more than one site, then all of the applicable regulatory, environmental, safety, or financial retention periods for each site need to be considered when determining the record retention period required. 

How Environmental and Safety Needs and Issues are Addressed within the EU... 

The safety of the equipment and the people operating it, as well as the environmental impact, need to be considered for the design of the equipment and processes. Other important details include the installation and utilization of appropriate sensors and measurement tools, the establishment and implementation of... 

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