Essay #2 Small Quanity Generator 575 words three references apa format

BEM 3701, Hazardous Waste Management 1

Course Learning Outcomes for Unit VII Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

5. Evaluate the efficacy of hazardous waste related mandates and programs.

6. Describe hazardous waste characteristics, pathways in the environment, and toxicological impacts.

7. Evaluate contemporary methods of hazardous waste mitigation and remediation including waste minimization, pollution prevention, reuse, and recycling.

Reading Assignment Chapter 20: Medical and Infectious Waste Chapter 21: Construction and Demolition Debris Chapter 22: Electronics Waste

Unit Lesson Medical and Infectious Waste More than 3.5 million tons of medical waste are generated per year in the United States (Pichtel, 2014). This waste was unregulated prior to 1988, when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published rules for the management of medical waste creating Subtitle J of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Medical waste is defined by its sources. An analysis is not required because medical waste is potentially infectious due to the nature and source of the waste, which can also include unused sharps. The specific classes of regulated medical waste (RMW) are:

1. Cultures and Stocks 2. Pathological Wastes 3. Human blood and blood products 4. Used Sharps 5. Animal Waste 6. Isolation Wastes 7. Unused Sharps

Exempted waste (exempted from the requirements of subpart J) include household waste, ash from incineration of RMW, and human remains intended for internment or cremation. Some of these wastes are also regulated by other sections of RCRA (Pichtel, 2014). Radioactive medical wastes are wastes produced by hospitals, research institutions, and other facilities. Radioactive medical wastes are not exempt from the requirements of RMW. These low-level radioactive wastes (LLW) are also regulated by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Hence, these wastes are subject to NRC regulations as well as EPA RMW, and must be properly stored until the waste sufficiently decays. The waste must then be managed as only RMW under RCRA. The radioactive waste cannot be shipped off-site as RMW, and if shipped as low-level radioactive waste, the regulations of the NRC apply, along with Department of Transportation (DOT) requirements for shipment containers and shipments, to its

UNIT VII STUDY GUIDE

Medical and Infectious Waste, Construction Waste, and Electrical Waste

BEM 3701, Hazardous Waste Management 2

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final disposition. If LLW is shipped to an industrial incinerator, that incinerator would then need to meet EPA regulations for incinerators and be permitted by the NRC. Medical waste is also subject to the generator requirements for packaging, storage, and labeling (which include preparing a waste tracking form similar to a manifest for off-site treatment/disposal), transport, treatment, and disposal. Medical waste regulation also includes facility requirements for on-site incineration, which is often the disposal method of choice for hospitals and large research organizations (Pichtel, 2014). The requirements for these incinerators are similar to those described for hazardous waste incinerators in Chapter 15. Many of these incinerators are located at large hospitals and research facilities. As with any treatment/disposal technology, there are drawbacks. While achieving significant volume reduction with the conversion of medical waste to ash, we must consider the emissions of pollutants such as mercury, and hydrocarbons (including polychlorinated dioxins). Microbial deactivation is a potential method to render medical wastes non-hazardous. This technology uses an autoclave or chemical disinfection of liquid wastes, such that the resultant treated waste is collected and discharged to the sanitary sewer. Microwave irradiation has also been researched as a method to convert medical waste to non-hazardous material. Construction and Demolition Waste (C&D) C&D is generally identified as non-hazardous waste. However, there can be a hazardous waste component to construction and demolition waste. The quantity of residential and non-residential C&D wastes in 2013 totaled 170 million tons (Pichtel, 2014). As expected, demolition and renovation activities make up the majority of C&D waste derived from buildings (Pichtel, 2014). Specific types of C&D materials include wood waste, metals, asphalt shingles, and asbestos shingles. Wood waste may contain various treatment chemicals including chromated copper arsenate (CCA). When this waste is recovered from C&D waste streams to be used for fuel, the metals are released during burning, and these toxins must either be segregated and not burned or combusted under conditions in which air pollution control equipment is utilized to reduce emissions. To reduce the amount of waste created by building demolition, the process of deconstruction can be used. Deconstruction involves the planning of demolition such that the materials recovered are segregated and collected for specific recycling and re-use activities (Pichtel, 2014). The chapter concludes by noting that the source of C&D waste may contain hazardous materials, which must first be removed and segregated prior to managing it as non-hazardous (Pichtel, 2014). A significant portion of the hazardous component is considered to be universal waste (lamps, mercury containing fixtures, and switches). C&D waste can also include other metal-containing materials and CCA treated wood (exempt from hazardous waste status, but still an issue if the wood is being burned as fuel as noted above). Also, asbestos is often contained in various building materials (shingles, ceilings, pipe insulation), and this material must be managed per Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and EPA regulations. In general, C&D waste is often not evaluated with regard to its waste. Instead, construction operations simply place all of the waste materials in a waste dumpster and send it to the landfill as solid waste. This is an opportunity for those of you who work for companies that are engaged in construction. The waste generation activities of construction contractors should be closely scrutinized. Electronic Waste Electronics have become a significant part of our life activities. Each household has approximately 24 electronic products (Pichtel, 2014). This is reflected in the amounts of electronic waste (e-waste) that is generated. Based on 2011 data, the EPA estimates e-waste was over 3.2 million tons per year (Pichtel, 2014, p. 591). Less than 20% of the waste was recycled, based on 2008 data, and it is estimated that nearly 75% of unwanted electronics are in storage, partly because of the uncertainty of how to manage it (Pichtel, 2014). There are a variety of constituents of e-waste with associated hazards. Electronics have metallic components containing lead, cadmium, chromium (VI), and other heavy metals. Also, when burned, the plastics contained in e-waste produces a wide range of toxic by-products, including halogenated dioxins, biphenyl ethers, and related compounds.

BEM 3701, Hazardous Waste Management 3

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There are confusing and often contradictory issues of determinations for components of e-waste. Since they are discarded materials, recycled and inherently waste-like materials all fit in the definition of potential hazardous waste. Therefore, the waste must be evaluated component by component to determine its classification. Some of the materials may pass the toxicity characteristic leaching procedure (TCLP) test when analyzed, and therefore meet the definition of hazardous waste. Other components of the waste stream may fall into the category of universal wastes. Some states have enacted their own regulations for e-waste as a distinct category of universal waste (see page 599, section 22.4.1 of the textbook). Also, to deal with cathode ray tubes (CRTs), the EPA published a special rule to address their management, allowing the processing of the CRTs to recover the lead and other basic components without requiring special permitting. This is being done to encourage responsible processing and extraction of the component metals. Unfortunately, some e-waste is exported to other countries where the environmental risks and occupational health consequences of improper handling and extraction of the metals is not controlled. In some industrial applications, the manufacturer, through “product stewardship programs” will include the recycling of the e-waste as a part of the customer support process. This process, if extended to consumers, is another way that e-waste could be more efficiently managed. For example, Dell Computers receives returns of defective laptops from customers. Instead of troubleshooting the defect, Dell sends the defective laptops to a recycler who disassembles them, segregates the parts into bins (consider a bin of hard drives), then tests each part and sends the bad ones to metal recycling via metal segregation. The good parts are put back into laptops, which are assembled from those parts and then sent back to Dell so they can sell them as refurbished computers.

Reference Pichtel, J. (2014). Waste management practices: Municipal, hazardous, and industrial (2nd ed.). Boca Raton,

FL: CRC Press.