The Handling of Substances and Materials

The handling of substances and materials has enormous impacts on the environment. We handle a lot of substances and materials household products products for the garden pesticides, fertilizers and weed-killers in agriculture medicines and many others. Too often, substances are not handled or disposed of according to recommendations, or the main utilisation criterion seems to be the more, the better . Some chemistry literacy is necessary to understand  

How to educate in this regard Mathematics may help, for instance by calculating the sum of the effects of individual actions by multiplying the effect of one action by the number of citizens in a country. One A4 page is probably 5 g of paper. If, in a country of 50 million citizens, each person saves one A4 page in a day, it amounts to (5 g) x (50000000) = 250000000 g = 250000 kg of paper. This is a huge amount to save. If, on the other hand, all those 50 million citizens decide that their contribution is not relevant, that amount cannot be saved. 

Visualization may also contribute to stimulate awareness. For instance, the previously mentioned image of the island of plastic bags in the middle of the ocean may have a strong visual impact, as it shows what can be the final outcome when familiar objects like plastic bags are not disposed of correctly by millions of persons. 

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Organo-metallic compounds, on the other hand, behave very much like organic compounds, e.g. they can be redistilled and may be soluble in organic solvents. A note of caution should be made about handling organo-metallic compounds, e.g. arsines, because of their potential toxicities, particularly when they are volatile. Generally the suppliers of such compounds provide details about their safe manipulation. These should be read carefully and adhered to closely. If in any doubt always assume that the materials are lethal and treat them with utmost care. The same safety precautions about the handling of substances as stated in Chapter 4 should be followed here (see Chapter 1). 

Stressing the fundamental message that the handling of substances in everyday life is part of the broad domain of chemistry and, therefore, chemistry information is essential for proper handling, and green chemistry criteria apply to it. Recommendations concerning substances and materials (such as those written on their containers) are chemistry-based and, because of this, they need to be taken into account carefully, to ensure appropriate usage and appropriate disposal once they have finished their useful period. 

All processes except laboratory operations. A laboratory operation is defined as any work with substances m which the containers used for reactions, transfers and other handling of substances are designed to be easily manipulated by one person. This does not include operations whose function IS to produce commercial quantities of material. 

The object of this book is to assist workers involved in chemical processes to determine level of risk wherever the handling of a substance exposes the participants. To do this, tools of analysis are presented in Part One (Methodology), and available data in Parts Two and Three. The material provided is intended to provided the means for this analysis, whatever the difficulties encountered - incoherence in known experimental data, insufficient or absent information etc. 

Numbers 7 and 8 in Table 3.6 represent high hazard substances such as azides, peroxides, perchlorates, and nitro compounds. The handling of such materials requires extreme care and safety precautions. 

Introduction Chemical reactivity is the tendency of substances to undergo chemical change. A chemical reactivity hazard is a situation with the potential for an uncontrolled chemical reaction that can result directly or indirectly in serious harm to people, property, or the environment. A chemical reaction can get out of control whenever the reaction environment is not able to safely absorb the energy and products released by the reaction. The possibility of such situations should be anticipated not only in the reaction step of chemical processes but also in storage, mixing, physical processing, purification, waste treatment, environmental control systems, and any other areas where reactive materials are handled or reactive interactions are possible. 

As storing temperature and time outside the plant are often out of the influence of the plant management, at least in summertime the handling of this veiy odoriferous material is a normal procedure. In order to prevent an escape of the odoriferous compounds into the atmosphere, in modem plants all devices and all machinery are capsulated as close as possible and all odoriferous gases and all polluted air are collected and exhausted into an appropriate air cleaning system, where all odoriferous compounds should be removed and/or desintegrated to odourless substances, before the cleaned air is released into the open atmosphere. 

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