Evaluating environmental conditions

In many ways, environmental audits are the easiest and most acceptable type of evaluation. In fact, regular environmental or housekeeping audits are already standard practice at most companies. These evaluations can often be improved by involving more employees in designing audit forms, conducting systematic and regular assessments, and posting the results in relevant work areas. 

Front-line workers also verify the dramatic impact of property damage on their work demeanor which, in turn, influences their attitude about safety. To them, xxnrepaired property damage signifies that management doesn t care about our work situation, or it s okay to damage property as long as we meet production demands.  

Operating Conditions/Tools Equip. Safe At-Risk Corrective Actions Taken 

aisles, sidewalks and walkways (dear of debns)  

Total Safe Observations + At-Rlsk Observations Total Corrective Actions Taken  

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Advanced composites and fiber-reinforced materials are used in sailcloth, speedboat, and other types of boat components, and leisure and commercial fishing gear. A ram id and polyethylene fibers are currentiy used in conveyer belts to collect valuable offshore minerals such as cobalt, uranium, and manganese. Constmction of oil-adsorbing fences made of high performance fabrics is being evaluated in Japan as well as the constmction of other pollution control textile materials for maritime use. For most marine uses, the textile materials must be resistant to biodeterioration and to a variety of aqueous pollutants and environmental conditions. 

Favorable polymer physical properties include water solubiUty and sample purity. Environmental conditions to consider in evaluating biodegradabihty are temperature, pH, moisture, oxygen, nutrients, suitable microbial population (fungal, algae, bacterial), concentration, and test duration. 

Any manufacturing process requiring refractories depends on proper selection and installation. When selecting refractories, environmental conditions are evaluated first, then the functions to be served, and finally the expected length of service. AH factors pertaining to the operation, service design, and constmction of equipment must be related to the physical and chemical properties of the various classes of refractories (35). 

The environmental conditions contemplated for tlie operating equipment also must be evaluated. Many of the unit operations are used in conjunction witli or in close proximity to process equipment and, tlierefore, the safety of tlie overall operation is involved. 

The controversy that arises owing to the uncertainty of the exact values of and b and their variation with environmental conditions, partial control of the anodic reaction by transport, etc. may be avoided by substituting an empirical constant for (b + b /b b ) in equation 19.1, which is evaluated by the conventional mass-loss method. This approach has been used by Makrides who monitors the polarisation resistance continuously, and then uses a single mass-loss determination at the end of the test to obtain the constant. Once the constant has been determined it can be used throughout the tests, providing that there is no significant change in the nature of the solution that would lead to markedly different values of the Tafel constants. 

The Underwriters Laboratories utilizes a combination of methods for environmental conditioning and adhesion testing to evalu-... 

Soil models tend to be based on first-order kinetics thus, they employ only first-order rate constants with no ability to correct these constants for environmental conditions in the simulated environment which differ from the experimental conditions. This limitation is both for reasons of expediency and due to a lack of the data required for alternative approaches. In evaluating and choosing appropriate unsaturated zone models, the type, flexibility, and suitability of methods used to specify needed parameters should be considered. 

The rate of hydrolysis of various organic chemicals, under environmental conditions can range over 14 orders of magnitude, with associated half-lifes (time for one-half of the material to disappear) as low as a few seconds to as high as 10 years and is pH dependent. It should be emphasized that if laboratory rate constant data are used in soil models and not corrected for environmental conditions — as is often the only choice — then model results should be evaluated with skepticism. 

Comparative evaluations of some clinical and laboratory data in children dwelling in different environmental conditions... 

Of the 190 accessions evaluated after one year s growth in Florida, 38 showed tuber formation. Tender leaves are incorporated in the food preparations in the South Asian region. Leaf protein concentrate (crude protein 51.9%) prepared from leaves yielded a PER value of 2.2 in comparison to 2.7 for corn-soy control. International Winged Bean Trials conducted in 19 countries recommend 5 varieties as having the best yield potential under varying environmental conditions. 

Acute static bioassays are employed to evaluate sample effects on fish and microinvertebrates. Fathead minnows and Daphnia pulex are the freshwater species employed, while sheepshead minnows and grass shrimp are used for marine assays. In all cases, the test organisms are exposed for 96 hours to prescribed concentrations of the sample introduced into holding tanks maintained at the same environmental conditions as a control population. 

Hayes et al. (1999) systematically evaluated the carbon isotope fractionation between carbonates and coeval organic matter for the past 800 Ma. They concluded that earlier assumptions of a constant fractionation between carbonate and organic matter is untenable and that fractionations may vary by about 10%o depending on the dominant biogeochemical pathway as well on environmental conditions. 

A characteristic feature of allelopathy is that the inhibitory effects of allelopathic compounds are concentration dependent. Dose-response curves with known compounds show an inhibition threshold. Below this level either no measurable effect occurs, or stimulation may result. Although the concentration of a compound required to exceed the inhibition threshold varies extensively according to different sensitivities among species and also among phases of the growth cycle for higher plants, the concept of an inhibition threshold seems consistent. Thus, it is reasonable to evaluate how, and if, a subthreshold concentration of an allelochemical may contribute to allelopathic interference. Also in need of evaluation is how environmental conditions may influence the deleterious action of an allelochemical and the concentration required for an effect. Such interactions are especially pertinent for those environmental situations that place some degree of stress on plant functions. 

The behavior of tacl mice was also analyzed in several animal models of anxiety. The open-field test is a widely used tool for behavioral research, but less specific for the evaluation of the anxiety state of the animal, because it is a summation of the spontaneous motor and the exploratory activities, and only the latter is influenced by the anxiety level (Choleris et al. 2001). Under aversive environmental conditions (high level of illumination) the animals activity is strongly affected by the emotional state, while less aversive situations (familiar, dimly lit environment) are useful to assess the general motor activity of mice. Because rodents avoid open areas, the activity of mice in the central part of the open-field arena is inversely correlated to the anxiety level. Tad mice spent only 6.5% of their total activity in the central part, which represented 11% of the total field, indicating that they avoided this aversive area, hi contrast, tacl mice spent 13.6% of their activity in the central area (Bilkei-Gorzo et al. 2002). The increased central activity of the tad mice indicates that the test situation was anxiogenic for tad animals, but less so for the knockout mice. 

Agencies or authorities such as ISO or lUPAC still do not provide any definition of ruggedness. In the chemical literature however, a ruggedness test was defined as [4,12] An intralaboratory experimental study in which the influence of small changes in the operating or environmental conditions on measured or calculated responses is evaluated. The changes introduced reflect the changes that can occur when a method is transferred between different laboratories, different experimentators, different devices, etc. . 

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