Preventive Principles

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. ... 

Diseases of suspected chemical etiology and their prevention, principles of studies on (No. 72, 1987) Disinfectants and disinfectant by-products (No. 216,1999)... 

Each Dow location is required to establish a loss prevention program base on hazard evaluation and designed to reduce the probability and magnitude of incidents. Programs must include the following elements, based on criteria and guidelines contained in Dow s Loss Prevention Principles. ... 

Dow s Loss Prevention Principles (LPPs) are a collection of design and installation practices which experience has shown to result in safer and more reliable operations (5). They constitute recommendations to be followed, where appropriate, in plant design and modifications. 

Loss prevention principles are dynamic tools, changing as needed to keep up with improving methods. A new edition of the LPP manual, containing several hundred pages, is published every two years. Part of the safety and loss prevention responsibility of Dow employees is to make certain that improved methods appear in the next edition of the LPP manual. The current (1986) edition contains 94 loss protection principles addressing 17 major elements of plant design. 

A typical loss prevention principle, LPP 7.1, deals with the storage of flammable liquids. It defines flammable liquids, then discusses eight factors to be considered in storing such chemicals. The major factors, each with several subdivisions, are ... 

Loss Prevention Principles, The Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Michigan, February 1986. 

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 an ideal world, an easy-to-contact, responsive modifications man would be available for questions generated in Operations, Engineering, and Maintenance. This modifications man could be a Process Safety Engineer, Loss Prevention Engineer, or a mechanical or chemical engineer who has been trained in chemical process safety. Preferably, this individual would be an on-site plant employee, but he could be a company regional engineer, a property insurance consultant, or a contractor. The modifications man must understand basic loss-prevention principles of proper layout. 

The release of these prevention principles has been described as a landmark event in prevention science (Bukoski, 2003). In this regard, the principles summarized in practical terms what years of scientific study reveals about the nature of substance use and abuse and how to prevent it. As such, these principles have been influential in the development and implementation of a variety of prevention interventions. 

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. 

Historically, an economic and preventive principle, the Polluter Pays , is gradually recognized as having legal effects either in public and administrative law, or in civil law. The PPP was adopted by the OECD in its 1972 ([C(72) 128], OECD 1972) and 1974 ([C(74) 223], OECD 1974 Recommendations. The 1991 OECD Recommendation ([C(90) I77(final)], OECD 1991) extended the PPP to the cost of damages generated by pollutions. 

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