Waste Management: Spickets
Posted on Wed, Sep 09, 2009 @ 11:04 AM
By Ian Lanza, Life Sciences Operations Coordinator
Consolidating hazardous and non-hazardous waste is a great technique for reducing disposal costs and reducing compliance liability. However, consolidating wastes may result in unsafe chemical exposure levels for technicians performing the consolidations and workers in the area.
OSHA requires that employee keep employee exposure levels below permissible exposure levels (PEL) by using engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment (PPE) in that order. What this means is that an employer must first purchase or develop engineering controls to manage PELs before resorting to PPE. Fume hoods, and pumps are common engineering controls.
Spickets are another great engineering control to reduce exposure levels while consolidating hazardous and non-hazardous wastes that are underutilized and often over looked. Spickets can be purchased in many sizes to fit almost any cap. Instead of pouring a smaller container of waste into a larger, a similar cap with a spicket can be attached to the smaller waste container and then drained into the larger container. Because the waste is directly drained from the smaller container to the larger container, a fraction of the chemical waste volatizes resulting in much low exposure levels. Draining waste with spickets also reduces the splash hazard pouring waste poses.
I have experienced several instances where PPE has been downgraded from level B PPE to Level C PPE by using spickets instead of pouring waste. I have even seen organization downgrade PPE from Level C to level D using spickets. This type of downgrade has allowed some organizations to consolidate waste streams for the first time, and others to consolidate waste in lab spaces. Using spickets to reduce exposure levels is preferred by OSHA because it is an engineering control opposed to PPE.