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

Atomic Priesthoods, Thorn Landscapes and Munchian Pictograms
(By Juliet Lapidos) -- During a 2004 cleanup operation at the Hanford nuclear site in Washington state, personnel digging through a trench uncovered a safe containing a glass bottle.  And inside the bottle, white sludge.

Tests identifying the substance as a type of plutonium gave way to more tests until, in the Spring of 2009, scientists from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory revealed what, exactly, the crew had uncovered: A 1944 artifact from the fledgling nuclear weapons program—the oldest existing sample of bomb-grade plutonium from a nuclear reactor, with a half-life of 24,110 years.

Although this sexagenarian sludge isn't dangerous to touch—its particles are too large to penetrate skin—it's poisonous if swallowed or inhaled and will be for centuries to come. Yet it was housed in a flimsy receptacle that should rightfully contain nothing more toxic than bleach. In the rush of nuclear discovery, the mid-century scientists never paused to consider that a trespasser might happen upon the safe and crack it open. | SLATE

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Rates of Time Preference for Saving Lives in the Hazardous Waste Site Context
What is the rate at which people discount future lives saved?  The answer to this question has important implications when comparing policies on the grounds of cost per life saved, especially in the context of hazardous waste site remediation, where risk reductions may occur at different times, depending on the permanence of the remedy.

We estimate this rate by asking a sample of Italian residents to choose between saving 100 lives now and X lives in T years, where both X and T are varied to the respondents.  Assuming constant exponential discounting, the responses to these questions imply a rate of time preference for saving lives of 12%. | PAPER

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E-Waste Casts Shadow Over Basel Convention
Twenty years since the adoption of the Basel Convention, a "catastrophic accumulation" of e-waste continues to fuel a global pile of hazardous waste.

The Basel Convention, a global treaty signed by 172 countries which regulates international movements of hazardous and toxic wastes, is marking its 20th anniversary on Tuesday.

"E-waste did not even exist as a waste stream in 1989 and now it's one of the largest and growing exponentially," Katharina Kummer Peiry, executive secretary of the international treaty, told journalists in Geneva. | TURKISHWEEKLY

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Fire at BC Battery Recycling Plant Contained
Investigators will be looking into what caused an explosion and fire in a building storing lithium batteries waiting to be recycled at a plant near Trail, in southeastern B.C.

Firefighters were still mopping up Sunday afternoon from the blaze that began Saturday evening at the plant owned by U.S.-based Toxco Inc. and spread to an adjacent municipal recycling facility. | CBC

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Recycling Your Old Cellphone is Now Easier Than Ever
VICTORIA – British Columbians will now have access to a web-based program that provides quick information to those looking for a place to recycle their old cellphones, Environment Minister Barry Penner announced today.

“Within seconds of entering my postal code at RecycleMyCell.ca, I was directed to seven drop-off locations within four kilometres of my office where I could take my old cellphone for recycling,” said Penner.  “This program diverts e-waste from our landfills and is consistent with the goals of our recycling regulation, which makes producers responsible for the lifecycle management of products they sell in B.C.”

Recycle My Cell is a free program organized by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association (CWTA) in conjunction with cellphone service providers, handset manufacturers and recycling companies.  The goal of the program is to raise awareness about the importance of cellphone recycling and keep handsets from entering Canada’s landfills. | RELEASE

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America’s Most Toxic Cities
By Francesca Levy) ATLANTA, GA -- Poor air quality, lack of clean water and a high rate of superfund sites make these metros most contaminated.

In Atlanta, Ga., you'll find southern gentility, a world-class music scene--and 21,000 tons of environmental waste. In spite of its charms, the city's combination of air pollution, contaminated land and atmospheric chemicals makes it the most toxic city in the country.

An urban skyline dotted with puffing smokestacks isn't the only measure of a city's cleanliness (or lack thereof). Most major cities suffer from a range of unseen hazards.  Contaminants can seep into the ground from bygone chemical spills or shuttered steel mills. Invisible leaks at industrial complexes discharge harmful substances into the air, or the normal course of business requires factories to expel toxins that eventually find their way to the water supply. | FORBES

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Homeless Nuclear Waste
(By Colin Woodard) WISCASSET, ME -- Standing on the end of Bailey Point, looking out on a cold, blue inlet of the Atlantic, you’d never know a nuclear power plant once stood here.

The massive concrete containment dome, the spent fuel storage pool, and the six-story-high turbine hall were all torn down earlier this decade, leaving a rain-soaked meadow of grass. The engineers and technicians who tended the 900-megawatt reactor packed up and left town a decade ago, when the Maine Yankee Atomic Power Station stopped producing power.

All that’s left is radioactive waste: the remains of the plant’s reactor vessel lining and the 1,435 spent fuel assemblies that passed through it over a quarter century of operations. | CSMONITOR

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