Hazardous sites

A more eomplieated or dangerous site will require a more extensive orientation. A seasoned erew on a site where the hazards are eonsidered low would not require the same length orientation as a nonexperieneed erew at a site they had never seen or heard of Initial orientation on a large, eomplieated or extremely hazardous site may take several hours or... 

In the United Kingdom, the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974) and regulations made under it require occupiers to provide a safe plant and system of work and adequate instruction, training, and supervision. In the European community, occupiers of major hazard sites are required to produce a safety case, which describes how hazards have been assessed and are kept under control. Many other countries have similar legislation, though standards of enforcement vary. 

Adequate advice/training on-site, hazard site mles, etc. ... 

Hale A.R., Guldenmund F., Bellamy L., Wilson C., 1999. IRMA Integrated Risk Management Audit for major hazard sites, in Schueller et al. (Eds.), Safety Reliability, Balkema, Rotterdam, pp. 1315-1320. 

Upon completion of site characterization activities, the team should prepare to exit the site. At this stage, the team should make sure that they have documented their findings, collected all equipment and samples, and resecured the site (e.g., locked doors, hatches, and gates). If the site is considered to be a potentially hazardous site or crime scene, there may be additional steps involved in exiting the site. 

The Niagara River has been a focus since 1987 as a major source of environmental contaminants. Both the U.S. and Canadian environmental agencies have made rigorous efforts to reduce pollution of toxic substances. Further, the EPA and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation identified 26 U.S. hazardous sites. The Niagara River Toxic Management Plan (NRTMP) has named several toxic chemicals, 10 of which are considered of major concern (Table 1-1). 

The 1980 Congressional revision of the National Contingency Plan, now known as the Superfund Bill, is effectively a compromise between sharply differing positions. It calls for priority setting to identify the most hazardous sites, and this in turn requires explicit assessment of the risks from the sites. 

Hence risk assessment criteria must be established so that there can be developed a national priority list of the hazardous sites that require remedial action. EPA has adopted the Mitre Model for assessing the risks and ranking waste sites. There is some criticism of this model, and there are a number of as yet unanswered questions about its application. Formal cost/benefit analysis will not be used, and risk assessment will be on a case-by-case basis. EPA will thus be developing its knowledge base and procedures as it carries out the program. 

Acknowledgment that mixtures may cause risks that are not fully covered by single compound evaluations does not automatically imply that mixture assessments should be performed for all potential mixture exposures. This depends on the problem at hand, the specific exposure situation, and the available information. If a regulator must make a decision about the remediation of 1 contaminated soil plot, and it is already known that one of the mixture components exceeds the remediation threshold, and this fact results in a need for remedial action itself, then a mixture assessment is redundant. Mixture assessment for contaminated soils (and other compartments and exposure routes) is useful if the known individual components do not exceed their respective thresholds, but if it is suspected that the overall mixture may still cause unacceptable adverse effects, and in case risk managers have a limited budget for a large number of contaminated sites, that is, when they have to prioritize the most hazardous sites to be remediated first, while other sites should possibly be subject to simple risk reduction measures. The situation is different for mixture emissions. Here, potential mixture effects should always be addressed because the aim was and is to establish an emission level that is lower than a certain (acceptable) effect level. 

CERCLA was passed in 1980 to provide a federally supervised system for the mitigation of chronic environmental damage, particularly the cleanup of sites contaminated with hazardous waste. In 1986, CERCLA was amended by the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA). Each Superfund site has been assessed, characterized, and prioritized based on risk. Potential sites are first screened using a preliminary assessment (PA) sites deemed a significant threat are then evaluated using a hazard ranking system (HRS) to measure the risk of the site relative to that of other potential sites. The most hazardous sites are then placed on the NPL in the order of their potential risk. 

It is possible for you to be exposed to metallic mercury vapors from breathing contaminated air around hazardous waste sites, waste incinerators, or power plants that bum mercury-containing fuels (such as coal or other fossil fuels), but most outdoor air is not likely to contain levels that would be harmful. Exposure to mercury compounds at hazardous waste sites is much more likely to occur from handling contaminated soil (i.e., children playing in or eating contaminated surface soil), drinking well-water, or eating fish from contaminated waters near those sites. Not all hazardous sites contain mercury, and not all waste sites that do contain mercury have releases of mercury to the air, water, or surface soils. 

A precursor to a toxicity index is the common use of tests to rank environmental samples or hazardous sites according to the severity of the toxic responses. Toxicity ranking defines priority for action on the most toxic effluents or contaminated sites. Ranking the samples can become complicated if toxicity has been measured with several tests that produced variations in rank. Joining the responses into a toxicity index would express potential hazard in a single number. 

In the United States, the Love Canal debacle near Buffalo, New York is an example of a dangerous landfill used for homes. A mixture of industrial and domestic waste was dumped into an abandon canal. After only a few years, the land was used to build homes. Toxic waste seeped from the ground and made many of the residents sick. The Government had to buy the homes and spend a large amount of money cleaning up the site. In the United States thousands of highly hazardous landfills and disposal sites have been identified. Similar hazardous sites exist through the world. 

One potential application is the use of neural networks to facilitate decisions about hazardous waste sites. These sites generate a great deal of data, in which patterns are inherent. Sites that once produced batteries, for example, will typically show a great deal of cadmium in the soil this finding usually leads to a decision about a particular form of remediation. A network s input layer could represent characteristics of hazardous sites (such as type of site, volume of contamination, type of contaminants, contaminated media, etc.), and its output units could correspond to possible decisions regarding methods of cleanup. Such a network could be trained and tested on RODS (Records of Decision) to establish the appropriate relationships and assess the network s accuracy. 

Cameron, R. E. Olivero, R. A. Cabbie, K. J. Carlsen, C. Teubner, M. D. Bottrell, D. W. Homsher, M. T., An Expert System Approach for Selection of Sampling Methods for Ground-Water Contamination at Hazardous Sites, In Proc. of the Inti. 

Basic Information Required for Hazardous Site Investigations... 

The Multi-Domain Expert System is an extension of the GEOTOX model which covers more features and widens the applications of the GEOTOX model. In addition to hazardous site investigation, this model has been used successfully to address various geo-environmental and engineering problems such as radon assessment, landslide control, and large structural systems. 

CORA was developed under EPA contract number 68-01-7090. The authors would especially like to thank Kirby Biggs and Russ Wyer of EPA s Hazardous Site Control Division for their help and support during the development of the model. 

Guidance on Remedial Actions for Contaminated Groundwater at Superfund Sites, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Hazardous Site Control Division, Office of Emergency and Remedial Response, 1988. 

If it is necessary to remove contaminated soil from the site for disposal at a permitted landfill, it will be necessary to determine whether the soil will meet the acceptance criteria for a non-hazardous or hazardous site. If the soil does not meet the acceptance criteria, treatment will be necessary to remove the mobile contaminants or to reduce their mobility. 

In evaluating exposure at a hazardous site, the assessor tries to characterize the site with respect to its physical characteristics as well as those of the human populations on and near the site. This results in a qualitative evaluation of the site and the potentially exposed populations with respect to the characteristics that influence exposure. Information gathered during this... 

Identification and recognition of hazards, site safety planning... 

Caught-in/between hazard.Site Safety — General — Caught-ln or -Between Hazard Defined... 

Site Safety — General — Caught In/Between Hazards Site Safety — General — Struck-By, Hit-By Hazards... 

Initial studies determined that the facility had not received any inspections from federal or state environmental agencies for years. The chemical was not very hazardous. There were few inspectors and they focused on more hazardous sites. Freedom Industries Inc. had purchased the facility about a month before the spiU. Within days of the spUl, Freedom Industries filed for bankraptcy. 

A comprehensive site safety and control plan should include the following summary analysis of hazards on the site and a risk analysis of those hazards site map or sketch site work zones (clean zone, transition or decontamination zone, work or hot zone) use of the buddy system site communications command post or command center standard operating procedures and safe work practices medical assistance and triage area hazard monitoring plan (air contaminate monitoring, etc.) decontamination procedures and area and other relevant areas. This plan should be a part of the employer s emergency response plan or an extension of it to the specific site. 

The health and safety adviser is responsible for professional standards and systems. They may also have line management responsibility for other health and safety professionals, in a large group of companies or on a large and/or high-hazard site. 

The demonstration that AMN have been taken to reduce risks ALARP for top-tier (X)MAH sites should form part of the safety report as required by regulations 7 and 8 of the (X)MAH Regulations... For high-hazard sites, Societal Risks/Concerns are normally much more relevant than Individual Risks, but Individual Risk must still be addressed . 

On major hazard sites, the more the contractor becomes involved with managing core business activities of the site, the more important it becomes for formal interfacing/integration of the SMS of the client with that of the contractor. 

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