Waste chemical disposal practices

What is the process for authorizing a chemical to be used on the site What pollution prevention practices are conducted at the site Is there a list of restricted chemicals How is chemical storage and use policed How are excess or waste chemicals disposed of What processes are in place to assure chemicals are not abandoned when work on a project ceases ... 

Baird is the 20-acre site of a former chemical mixing and batching company. Poor waste disposal practices resulted in the contamination of groundwater, soil, the municipal water supply, and a brook adjacent to the site. Over one hundred contaminants, including chlorinated and nonchlorinated volatile organics, heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides, and dioxins, had been identified in site soil and groundwater. Remediation activities included soil excavation and incineration, and groundwater treatment (the audit focused on the soil excavation and incineration... 

Effect of Waste Disposal Practices on Ground Water Quality at Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation Mead, Washington," Robison and Noble, Inc., April 1978. 

The technology of deep-well injection has been around for more than 70 years. Most Americans would be surprised to know that there is a waste management system already in operation in the U.S. that has no emissions into the air, no discharges to surface water, and no off-site transfers, and exposes people and the environment to virtually no hazards. 1 The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) has stated that Class 1 wells are safer than virtually all other waste disposal practices for many chemical industry wastes. 

Preservation of a habitable planet demands that we minimize waste production and responsibly dispose of waste that is generated (Box 2-1). Recycling of chemicals is practiced in industry for economic as well as ethical reasons it should be an important component of pollution control in your lab. 

Under current EPA regulations, a chemical waste is either hazardous or it is not, and there is no further classification of hazardous chemical waste with respect to the degree of hazard. Some states have defined classes of hazardous chemical waste (e.g., extremely hazardous waste) but, in practice, the requirements on management and disposal of all hazardous wastes have resulted in essentially the same approaches being used regardless of hazard. When a hazardous chemical waste is mixed with a nonhazardous solid waste, the entire waste is classified as hazardous unless the former is a characteristically hazardous waste that does not contain any listed waste and mixing with the nonhazardous waste removes the hazardous characteristic. 

Home is the most important setting for infants and young children. They often eat, play, and sleep in the same area. Examples of sources of exposure to pollutants include building materials (e.g. wood treated with arsenic-based pesticides), lead-based paints, insecticides that are sprayed indoors, fuel (e.g. coal and wood) for indoor cooking, disposal practices for domestic waste (e.g. incineration), household chemicals (e.g. solvents), and small-scale enterprises at the family residence (e.g. brick producers who operate low-technology combustion kilns and makers of pottery using lead-based paints). 

The projected profile and quantities of secondary wastes remaining in inventory at the end of operations at each of the five currently operating chemical agent disposal facilities, based on current disposal practices, are shown in Table 3-1. A profile of secondary wastes currently shipped off-site for treatment and the disposal methods are given in Table 3-2. 

Recommendation 3-10. The Chemical Materials Agency should continue its support for and emphasis on local stakeholder input and involvement as mission-critical elements when acceptable secondary waste disposal practices are being defined and regulatory permit requirements are negotiated. 

Chemical contamination of some groundwater and surface-water supplies may have occurred as a result of point-source, waste disposal practices located near State College, PA and the Pennsylvania State University. The compound, unidentified, but having a consistent retention time for elution in the analytical method used for tracing and quantification, will be further described as a marker compound in order to properly focus on the dispersal aspects of this problem. It... 

Lined and unlined lagoons were constructed on-site to store liquid wastes. These leaked at various times in the past thus contributing to groundwater pollution. A land treatment operation where liquid wastes were disposed of by flood irrigation methods also added to the pollution. These on-site waste disposal practices have contributed to soilwater and groundwater contamination and are marked "A" in Figure 1. This is the potential initial disposal point for the marker compound and other chemical substances released with plant effluents and sludges. 

Data from the TRI database provide valuable information on the amounts of manganese released to different environmental media (e.g., air, soil, and water) each year, although details on the chemical form and physical state of the waste materials are not included. These disposal practices are not regulated under current federal law. TRI data may not be complete estimates of total release. Also, because these data reflect past releases, they may not be representative of current releases at these facilities. 

In summary, it is desirable to order and maintain in stock as small amounts of chemicals as practicable in order (a) to minimize the risks in the event of an incident, (b) to reduce the overall expense by reducing the amount requiring disposal as hazardous waste, and (c) to minimize the... 

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