Risk management industrial chemicals

Li, S., Regulation and health standards in management of risk in Chinese chemical manufacturing Industry , in Risk Management of Chemicals, Richardson, M.L., (Ed.), The Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, 1992, p. 167-190... 

Risk matrix as a tool of risk management in chemical industry BASF Chemical Company Presentation. 

Greenberg, El. R. and J. J. Cramer. 1991. Risk Assessment and Risk Management for the Chemical Process Industry. Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York. 

In order to accomplish with the aforementioned aim, during the first year of project, an extensive research on the different chemical additives used in six industrial sectors was conducted plastics, textiles, electronics, lubricants, leather, and paper. A list of selected chemical additives was identified for each sector and used as a study basis for the rest of the project. This is the case of the decabromo-diphenyl ether (BDE) used in electronics as a flame retardant or the triclosan used in the textile as a biocide. The results of this investigation were presented in the first volume of this book (Global Risk-Based Management of Chemical Additives I Production, Usage and Environmental Occurrence). This volume also included a section of case studies related to the selected additives in different countries (i.e., Denmark, Vietnam, Brazil, India). The main outcomes of the first part of the project are summarized below ... 

Environmental Quality. The abstracts come from journals or digests published by CSA on important issues including environmental pollution, toxicological studies of industrial chemicals, ecological impacts of biologically active chemicals, as well as health, safety, and risk management in occupational situations. The POLTOX CD-ROM contains over 200,000 records from these sources since 1981. 

A short synopsis of the overall emergency management structure, how other industrial emergency response, contingency, and risk management plans fit into the ERP for chemical emergencies, and applicable policies, procedures, actions plans, and reference documents should be cited. Policies should include interconnect agreements with adjacent communities and just how the ERP may affect them. 

This is confusing. Why don t risk assessors simply decide what level of exposure is safe for each chemical, and risk managers simply put into effect mechanisms to ensure that industry reaches the safe level Why should different sources of risk be treated differently Why apply a no risk standard to certain substances (e.g., those intentionally introduced into food, such as aspartame) and an apparently more lenient risk-henefit standard to unwanted contaminants of food such as PCBs, methylmercury, and aflatoxins (which the FDA applies under another section of food law) Why allow technological limitations to influence any decision about health What is this risk-henefit balancing nonsense Aren t some of these statutes simply sophisticated mechanisms to allow polluters to expose people to risk ... 

While the implementation of risk management systems may vary from company to company, they are a fundamental activity in the chemical, petrochemical, and hydrocarbon processing industries. A company s approach to risk management reflects its beliefs and values. 

The large number of industrial chemicals and their applications, the global nature of supply chains as well as the fundamentally limited knowledge about the direct and indirect effects of industrial chemicals on ecosystems and the human organism, all call for pragmatic restrictions for risk assessment and risk management. The risks of chemical products in each of their applications can neither be predicted exactly nor can they be reduced to zero in real-life situations. 

OECD, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Environment Directorate, 13-Dec-2004, ENV/JM/MONO(2004)28/PART1, Series on Risk Management No 17, "Workshop on experiences and perspectives of service-oriented strategies in the chemicals industry and related areas", Vienna, Austria, 13-14 November 2003, Part I Summary and conclusions... 

Well before the PP became a political slogan, government agencies and the chemical industry built precauhon into risk management decisions. A decision by a chemical company not to market a potentially hazardous product is seldom if ever publicized, but the world would certainly have experienced a large number of additional severe accidents from chemicals if precaution had not prevailed among responsible industry decision mak-... 

Under the TSCA, a new chemical is a chemical substance that is not already included on the TSCA Inventory, and is intended to be used for a commercial purpose (other than as a drug or pesticide) in the USA. Section 5 of the TSCA requires manufacturers or importers of a new chemical to notify the EPA (i.e., submit a premanufacture notification, PMN) before manufacturing or importing the chemical. The EPA has only 90 days (extendable to 180 days under certain circumstances) from the time of receipt of the notification to determine if an unreasonable risk may or will be presented by any aspect of the new industrial chemical, and make risk management decisions and take action to control any unreasonable risks posed by the chemical [17]. If after 90 days the submitter of a new chemical is not notified by the EPA of any regulatory restrictions or test requirements, they can legally market or import the chemical. 

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