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Hazardous Waste
Anya, Ariana, Abby, and Maddie
What is Hazardous Waste?
Definitions
Corrosive: are acidic or alkaline wastes which can readily corrode or dissolve flesh,
metal, or other materials
-ex. Waste sulfuric acid from automotive batteries
Discarded Commercial Products: These lists include specific commercial chemical
products in an unused form.
-ex. Some pesticides and some pharmaceutical products become hazardous waste
when discarded
Ignitable nonspecific source: Wastes from common manufacturing and industrial
processes
-ex. solvents that have been used in cleaning or degreasing operations
More definitions
Reactive: wastes that are unstable under "normal" conditions. They can cause
explosions, toxic fumes, gases, or vapors when heated, compressed, or mixed with
water.
-ex. lithium-sulfur batteries and explosives
Source specific: includes certain wastes from specific industries, such as petroleum
refining or pesticide manufacturing.
Toxic: wastes that are harmful or fatal when ingested or absorbed. When toxic wastes
are land disposed, contaminated liquid may leach from the waste and pollute
groundwater.
-ex. mercury and lead
Conversion Techniques
● Physical Treatment
o Stabilization (Solidification)
 Sometimes used on incinerator ash or other haz.
material before landfilling or underground burial.
 Additives are combined with waste material to make
it more solid and prevent chemical reactions.
 Soil washing at dumpsites to filter haz. waste solids
out of liquids.
 Distillation
● Heated to a vapor and then condensed to liquid
Conversion Techniques Contd.
● Chemical Treatment
o Materials are added or
removed from the haz.
material to produce new, less
hazardous chemicals.
o Chemical Neutralization
 Like mixing a corrosive
acid with with carbonate
lime or a different high p-H
material until it isn’t acidic
anymore.
Conversion Techniques Contd.
● Biological Treatment
o Includes the utilization of
microbes to break down
wastes through a series of
organic chemical reactions.
o New materials created by
the microbe reactions can be
recycled or reused.
o Future lies in genetic
engineering
Conversion Techniques Contd.
● Incineration
o Municipal solid wastes are burned
at high temperatures to convert
them to gaseous and residue
products.
o Helps reduce the amount put in
landfills by 20-30%.
● Thermal Treatment
o Incinerators turn solid waste
material into heat, gas, steam and
ash.
● Air pollution brings controversy
Perpetual Storage
● Long-term
● Meant to survive ‘forever’
o
o
Natural stresses
Eventually fail
● Heavily regulated by EPA
● Some specific to liquid/solid wastes
● Natural and manufactured
Examples of Perpetual Storage
● Solid
o
o
Landfills
Waste Piles
● Liquid
o
o
Surface Impoundments
Underground Injections
● Natural Storage
o
o
Salt Formations
Arid Region Unsaturated Zone
Solid Waste
● Landfills
o
o
o
Secure - Buried
Double-layer plastic
protection
Groundwater contamination
● Waste Piles
o
o
o
In drums in specified facility
Easy to spot leaks
Ship to facility
The Problem with Landfills
Liquid Waste
● Surface Impoundments
o
Excavated lagoon/lake
● Underground Injections
o
Shoot waste below caprock zone
● Groundwater
● Earthquakes
Natural Storage
● Salt Formations
o
o
Salt = no flowing
water
Can be sealed
● Arid Region
Unsaturated Zone
o
Between land
surface and
groundwater
Case Study: Love Canal
● Intended to be the center of an industrial city the 19th
century, however it was never finished
● 1942: became a garbage dump, as well as a location
where Hooker Chemical and Plastics Corporation
began dumping their chemical waste
● 1946: Hooker bought the location to use as an industrial
landfill
● 1953: Hooker sold the land to the city for $1.00 on the
condition that the company be released from any
liability for injury or damage caused by the dump's
contents
Love Canal continued
● The city filled in the landfill, and built houses adjacent to the
land, and a school/playground on top of the site
● A survey taken by local mothers found:
o many birth defects
o chronic medical problems
o miscarriages/stillborns
● 1978: City purchased houses surrounding landfill and
demolished them (239 houses)
● 1988: Occidental Petroleum (the parent company of Hooker
Chemical and Plastics) agreed to pay some $250 million in
damages to Love Canal residents
The Superfund Program
● “Superfund is the federal government’s
program to clean up the nation’s
uncontrolled hazardous waste sites.”
● It allows the EPA to clean up such sites
and to compel responsible parties to
perform cleanups or reimburse the
government for EPA-lead cleanups.
Superfund Program Contd.
● Process
o
o
o
Assess sites
Place on priority list
Establish and
implement cleanup
plans
Superfund Program
●
●
●
●
A baseline risk assessment is used
to see if there would be potential
threats to human health and the
environment.
Detailed analysis is completed for
each site.
o Looks at things like cost and
state acceptance, overall
human and environmental
health, implementability,
effectiveness, and others.
Each are ranked with importance.
Details are summarized to developed
a remedy.
Andover
● Waste Disposal Engineering Site
● Includes a 72 acre landfill
● Early on there was risk of
groundwater contamination, so
they implemented an
extraction/treatment system.
● Have an enclosed flare system
to deal with harmful gases.
● Also have piloted a treatment
system for the hazardous waste
pit.
E-Waste
● Electronic products that have become unwanted or non-working and have
essentially reached the end of their useful life.
● Televisions, microwaves, computers, and cell phones are examples
● China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam, and the Philippines handle anywhere from
50 percent to 80 percent of this e-waste, often shredding, burning, and
dismantling the products.
● E-waste has a lot of health risks. For example, primary and secondary
exposure to toxic metals, such as lead, results mainly from open-air
burning used to retrieve valuable components such as gold. Combustion
from burning e-waste creates fine particulate matter, which is linked to
pulmonary and cardiovascular disease.
https://youtu.be/8ZBHOVYbOIA
Works Cited
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http://water.epa.gov/type/groundwater/uic/basicinformation.cfm
http://www.epa.gov/wastes//hazard/tsd/td/index.htm#inject_well
http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/waste-management-and-waste-disposal-methods.php
http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/Issues/OtherIssues/perpetual-waste-storage-perpetuity.html
http://science.jrank.org/pages/3235/Hazardous-Wastes-Treatment-disposal-technologies.html
https://books.google.com/books?id=cEcc9rnLGJEC&pg=PT546&lpg=PT546&dq=%22arid+region+unsaturated+
zone%22+%2B+waste&source=bl&ots=5OungSMy2T&sig=3_lOaGuON0oNcuCerbzAqqY0KDY&hl=en&sa=X&e
i=-n8RVbDJoiayASdj4LABg&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22arid%20region%20unsaturated%20zone%22%20%
2B%20waste&f=false
http://www.prb.org/Publications/Articles/2013/e-waste.aspx
http://www.epa.gov/superfund/
http://www.mhhe.com/Enviro-Sci/CaseStudyLibrary/Topic-Based/CaseStudy_LoveCanal.pdf
https://www.youtube.com/user/wastemanaful