What are Hazardous Wastes?

Hazardous wastes are those wastes which, due to their nature and quantity, are potentially hazardous to human health and the environment.  As a rule, hazardous wastes require special handling, labelling, storage, transportation and disposal techniques to eliminate or reduce the hazard. 

Generated primarily as the by-product of industrial and manufacturing processes, hazardous wastes are also produced via commercial, medical and government activities.

Used motor oil, acids, waste pesticides, biomedical & radiological wastes, PCBs, solvents, metals and asbestos are common examples of hazardous wastes.  Even chemicals and cleaning products with an expired “best before” date, can be classified as hazardous. 

News

Sound Clean-up Will Go Better with Victoria on Board
WASHINGTON, WA -- It never made sense.  Washington state, in partnership with the federal government, is spending millions of dollars to clean-up and preserve Puget Sound, yet at the same time, the city of Victoria, B.C., every day is dumping millions of gallons of raw sewage into the waters that separate Washington and Vancouver Island.

It never made sense to Washington taxpayers who were investing their hard-earned dollars to improve water quality while their neighbours to the north were polluting those same waters.
Finally, there are two bits of good news — news that begins to make sense and put the neighbouring nations on a similar course. | THEOLYMPIAN

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Canada Better Than US and Mexico at Reporting Industrial Pollutants: Study
(BY Tobi Cohen) MONTREAL, QC -- The United States and Mexico might consider emulating Canada when it comes to public reporting of industrial pollutants that are released into the air or water or transferred for disposal or recycling, suggests a new report.

The study released Wednesday by Montreal's Commission for Environmental Co-operation found a 57 per cent increase between 1998 and 2005 in the number of Canadian facilities that publicly report on industrial pollution.

In that same period, the United States saw a decrease in the number of reporting facilities, while Mexico just started reporting two years ago, project manager Orlando Cabrera said. | CP

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From Land to Sea: Tracing Mercury’s Transit to Coastal Environments
(BY Noreen Perks) AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY -- On a global average, the amount of mercury falling out of the sky has tripled since the Industrial Revolution, primarily because of the burning of fossil fuels.  Although this atmospheric deposition has long been considered the key vector for the widespread contamination of freshwater and coastal ecosystems, some scientists are focusing on another potential source: subterranean flows of terrestrial groundwater. | ES&T

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Is Gasoline a Hazardous Waste in the Refining Process?
(BY Calvin Zoellner) TAMPA, FL -- To answer the question, we first need to know how many gallons of gasoline are refined from one barrel of oil.  One barrel (42 gallons) of crude oil, when refined, produces approximately 19.6 gallons as well as other petroleum products.  Some of the other products that come from the refining process are asphalt, lubricating oils, paraffin wax, heating oil, tar, and other parts of industrial products.

Overall, gasoline yields minimal monetary value compared to the byproducts, chemicals and resins which yield hundreds of dollars more at the retail value.  The real money in refined oil is not in gasoline.  If gasoline was not consumed by the auto loving public it would have to be repositioned in the market or disposed of as a hazardous waste.  Could this be a possible explanation why the oil companies insist upon marketing gasoline and resisting the idea of alternative energy for automobiles? | EXAMINER

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Hospital’s Drug Problem
(BY Janet Raloff) USA -- Considerable attention has focused, in recent years, on why trace residues of prescription medicines contaminate most lakes, streams and estuaries. Excretion by consumers is one obvious source. But disposal of pharmaceutical wastes is another. And who has the most drugs to dump? Hospitals.

Figuring out how to responsibly discard drugs plagues hospitals and clinics throughout the country, according to Firouzan Massoomi. But not as many facilities worry about the problem as they should, he charges, because most don’t know that adhering to standard practice violates federal law or threatens to seriously pollute the environment. | SCIENCENEWS

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Hanford Digs Up Radioactive Wasp Nests
(BY Shannon Dinninny) YAKIMA, WA -- Workers at the nation's most contaminated nuclear site are conducting a sting operation to dig up radioactive wasp nests that could number in the thousands.

Mud dauber wasps built the nests, which are largely inactive now, at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation in 2003. That's when workers finished covering cleaned-up waste sites with fresh topsoil, native plants and straw to help the plants grow - creating perfect ground cover for the insects to build their nests.

Fortunately for the wasps, nearby cleanup work also provided a steady supply of mud. Today, the nests are "fairly highly contaminated" with radioactive isotopes, such as caesium and cobalt, but don't pose a significant threat to workers digging them up. | TRI-CITYHERALD

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N.B. Could be Home to Canada’s Nuclear Waste Storage Facility
NEW BRUNSWICK, CN -- New Brunswick's geology may make it suitable as a storage facility for all of Canada's used uranium, according to the Nuclear Waste Management Organization.

The organization is visiting several New Brunswick cities this week as it seeks public opinion on choosing a Canadian site for storing spent uranium from the country's nuclear reactors.

Jo-Ann Facella, the director of social research for the nuclear waste organization, said new research is showing that a nuclear storage site could be located outside of a mountainous area, such as the Canadian shield. | CBC

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Recycled Radioactive Metal Contaminates Consumer Products
(BY Isaac Wolf) USA -- Thousands of everyday products and materials containing radioactive metals are surfacing across the United States and around the world.  Common kitchen cheese graters, reclining chairs, women's handbags and tableware manufactured with contaminated metals have been identified, some after having been in circulation for as long as a decade.  So have fencing wire and fence posts, shovel blades, elevator buttons, airline parts and steel used in construction.

A Scripps Howard News Service investigation has found that -- because of haphazard screening, an absence of oversight and substantial disincentives for businesses to report contamination -- no one knows how many tainted goods are in circulation in the United States. | SCRIPPSNEWS

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New USEPA Regulations May Regulate Coal Ash as Hazardous Waste
(BY James Bruggers) LEXINGTON, KY -- A senior U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official told utility industry officials and academic researchers that national regulations on handling ash from coal-fired power plants are coming -- and they may include classifying the material as hazardous waste. | COURIERJOURNAL

ED NOTE:  From the opening round of the 2009 World of Coal Ash Conference, this commentary is the direct result of the 2008 Silent Christmas Slurry Disaster – North America’s largest environmental disaster ever.  Suffice to say, it is hard not to understate just how massive the ramifications of what such a designation will mean for both sides of the Energy & Environment coin.

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