Pollution prevention principle

List die advantages of applying tlie pollution prevention principle to an... 

There are a variety of process safety risks one needs to assess with chemical processes. In general, these risks will lead to an evaluation of the potential for the process to have precipitous changes in temperature and or pressure that lead to secondary events such as detonations, explosions, over pressurizations, fires, and so forth. The most cost-effective way of avoiding these sorts of risks is through the adoption of inherent safety principles. Inherent safety principles are very similar to and complementary to pollution prevention principles, where one attempts to use a hierarchy of approaches to avoid and/or reduce the risk of an adverse event. The reader is referred elsewhere to a more complete treatment of this important area of process design. ... 

The pollution prevention principle presupposes that all environmental pressure is potentially harmful. Conservative approaches are necessary to protect the environment because multiple stressors due to the presence of low concentrations of more than one substance or unexpected effects of metabolites (e.g., hormone disruption) can never be excluded. This opinion is in line with the community conditioning hypothesis (Matthews et al. 1996), which states that ecological communities tend to preserve information about every event in their history, including stress by substances. It is also in line with the rivet hypothesis (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1981), which presupposes that each loss of a species (equivalent to a rivet in the analogy) affects ecosystem integrity to a small extent, and, if too many rivets are lost, the system collapses. 

The pollution prevention principle considers the what if question more important than the so what question. Consequently, emission of substances to nontarget sites should be prevented as much as is technologically and socioeconomically feasible. An option in line with the pollution prevention principle is to always set the maximum permissible risk concentration (MPC) in ecosystems on the more or less... 

A further conservative approach in line with the pollution prevention principle is to apply an additional uncertainty factor to the MPCs of individual compounds to account for the possible combined effects of the many substances encountered in the environment. For example, in The Netherlands, negligible risk concentrations (NCs) are derived from the MPC by dividing it by 100. These NCs are considered as target values to be reached in the near future (-10 years Sijm et al. 2002). 

The pollution prevention principle should not be confused with the precautionary principle (Graham 1999 Commission of the European Communities 2000 Government of Canada 2001). The pollution prevention principle simply aims to prevent pollution, whereas the precautionary principle is more subtle and is based on precautionary action if the uncertainty of the risk is too great and the intensity is potentially very large. In that case, the measures taken should be proportionate and temporary, accompanied by efforts to reduce the uncertainty, and reviewed again when further information becomes available. 

The use of pollution-prevention principles on the home front clearly does not involve the use of high-technology equipment or major lifestyle changes success is only dependent upon active and willing public participation. All can help to make a difference. 

In the United States, companies are required to submit premanufacture notice to the U.S. EPA prior to introducing new chemicals to commerce. To encourage the application of pollution prevention principles and the development of inherently low hazard new chemicals, the U.S. EPA has instituted a pollution prevention (P2) framework as part of its Sustainable Futures program (U.S. EPA, 2004c). As part of the program, training and support are provided to companies in the evaluation of new chemicals, with limited available information, using the U.S. EPA s hazard... 

The above hierarchy is based on pollution prevention principles (see part VI, Pollution Prevention problems, additional details). 

A key to identifying and applying pollution prevention principles is to understand the total life cycle of a product or material. From an ultimate disposal view, identify and discuss potential opportunities for pollution prevention for a juice pack of orange juice. Note that both the packaging and content are components of this popular product. 

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