Environmental Health & Safety Compliance Blog

Bacteria: What is it good for?

Posted by Mark Campanale on May 4, 2011 8:49:00 AM

darrell

Sanitary wastewater treatment, of course!

Maybe you never once thought about wastewater systems or perhaps you said, “Just dump that; it’ll go to the wastewater treatment facility anyway.” In terms of wastewater treatment, an educated and conscientious public helps keep recreational and drinking water supplies free of contamination. Let’s find out what happens in the sanitary system we use and take for granted every day, and why we should think twice before sending something down the drain.

Wastewater from homes and businesses travels through pipes to larger sewers below ground. The sewers are accessible for inspections and maintenance through manholes, and lead to a publicly-owned treatment works (POTW) facility, which is designed to treat primarily one thing: human waste.

Of course, many other wastes enter the system including “untreatables” such as dental floss, chewing gum, hygiene products, and children’s toys, to name a few. Accidents happen but placing as much untreatable waste as possible into household garbage ultimately saves resources and sewer bill costs because those items must be screened at the POTW entrance (called the headworks) then hauled away.

As repulsive as human waste is to humans, it is nothing less than the most delectable feast to many bacteria. These bacteria, known collectively as activated sludge (are you getting hungry?), are the heart stomach of the POTW.

Under tightly-controlled conditions, sludge digests wastewater organic matter. When the smorgasbord is complete, liquid and sludge solids are separated. Liquid continues through a final disinfection (reaching near drinking water quality) before discharge to a nearby river, lake, or ocean. The dewatered solids are often sold as fertilizer. Other byproducts such as methane gas are produced and can be reclaimed as renewable resources to power the POTW.

Despite my simplification of POTWs, their true complexities are proven by regulations that require designs licensed by professional engineers, permits approved by government agencies, and systems operated by experienced and certified personnel.

Ask if your local POTW offers tours and you can see how much happens “behind the scenes” to keep our waters safe.

Now that you have a basic understanding of sanitary wastewater treatment, will you think twice about what you dump, flush, or rinse down the drain? What do you think happens to other potentially harmful “stuff” that gets into the system? Check back here for more insight.

EH&S Tips: Quick Green Moments

Posted by Rebecca McDaniel on Mar 29, 2010 4:15:00 PM

By Greg Rosinski, Chemist II

A vast majority of society has made a committed move towards "Green Existence". Helpful tips to remember or that should be posted in offices or homes to help save energy and emissions are the following:

  • Make sure to turn off your computer at the end of a work day. This helps to reduce energy consumption, save money, decreases the effects on global warming, and move towards personal stewardship of natural resources used to keep a computer on.
  • A laboratory containing a Variable Air Volume (VAV) Fume hood should instruct lab personnel to make sure they completely shut the fume at the end of each use. Leaving a VAV fume hood open causes the air exhausted into the fume hood to leave the fume hood increasing the amount of energy used, money wasted, and impact on natural resources. Closing just one VAV fume hood in a laboratory after every use over the course of a year results in an energy saving approximately the same as the energy used by 3 houses in a year. 
  • Laboratory personnel should move towards using washable containers for lab use. Even though most plastic equipment is recyclable it still creates wasted energy to recycle the material. To help preserve the natural resources used in recycling simply use glass beakers, measuring devices, and other lab equipment. This applies to eating meals at work as well. Bring in containers from home that can be washed or use washable dishware from the cafeteria. 
  • Try to remember the impact of wasted water, electricity, or gas on the environment when working in laboratory. The earth is already experiencing shortages in the majority of natural resources, and most of our time in life is spent at work. That is why we must make a committed decision to decreasing unused natural resources on a daily basis.

All though there are other areas to help move towards a "Green Existence" the above topics are several helpful tips. These tips should be post in work places or circulated throughout the workplace to increase general awareness.

Tags: Environment

Proactive Chemical Management

Posted by Rebecca McDaniel on Dec 8, 2009 10:27:00 AM

By Greg Rosinski, Chemist II

Walking through the laboratories of colleges and universities will result in seeing a lot of unused chemicals that are prior circa 1980. Typically the chemicals are pushed to the back of the chemical storage cabinet until the professor retires. In order to decrease the potential exposure these chemicals could create it is important for the Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) department to monitor the amount of these chemicals remaining. Recently, a local university had a professor retire from a career of over 50 years of teaching in the same lab. This professor had a refrigerator full of temperature sensitive chemicals that he kept adding to over the years without properly disposing of them. Murphy’s Law played out in this circumstance when a storm happened on the weekend causing a power outage. The school’s generators also were struck causing the refrigerator to shut off, and increase in temperatures beyond the allowable range for the chemicals. The chemicals reacted causing the containers to fail, and spill throughout the refrigerator. On Monday when the professor went to open the refrigerator to start his lab the fumes were nauseating, and forced the EH&S department to call Triumvirate Environmental Inc. to properly dispose of the chemicals. The EH&S then had to make a phone call to have the refrigerator properly decontaminated. The cost to the university in bills and the inconvenience of shutting down the lab has made the EH&S director proactive in disposing of unused chemicals. The result of proper management of aged chemicals has reduced their average spending on disposal, and the occurrence of spills or other incidents. Properly managing chemicals involves spending time in labs, and looking outside of the normal areas. This will help to identify chemicals that are no longer in use. The cost of spills costs more than proactively managing a hazardous waste program. A good place to start looking for temperature sensitive chemicals (not an all inclusive list) is the Department of Transportation (DOT). The DOT’s list can be found in 49 CFR 173.224 for self reactive materials, and 49 CFR 173.225 for organic peroxides. These two types of chemicals are known to become unstable with age.

Tags: Environmental Health and Safety, EHS, DOT, Department of Transportation, Chemicals, 49 CFR, Chemical Management

EH&S News: EPA Exclusion of Rags and Wipes

Posted by Rebecca McDaniel on Nov 17, 2009 11:38:00 AM

By Kristina Florentino, Environmental Compliance Specialist

Wide arrays of industries use wipes-including rags, shop towels, disposable wipes and paper towels-are used for cleaning, disinfecting and degreasing. These wipes are considered hazardous waste when discarded if the wipes exhibit a hazardous waste characteristic or are contaminated with a listed solvent (RCRA waste codes F001 through F005). Listed waste mixtures are regulated under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) under the mixture rule, which states that a mixture composed of any amount of a non-hazardous waste and any amount of a listed hazardous waste is considered a listed hazardous waste. Thus, any amount of a listed waste, no matter how minute, when mixed with a large volume of non-hazardous waste, the resulting mixture will carry the same waste code and regulatory status as the initial waste carried. The rule is applicable regardless of the chemical composition and properties of the resulting mixture.

On October 27, 2009, the EPA published a Notice of Data Availability (NODA) in the federal register, 74 FR55163, seeking comments on a revised risk analysis methodology of an earlier proposed rule relating to solvent contaminated wipes. The Proposed revisions relate to RCRA hazardous waste regulations governing the management of solvent contaminated wipes and would exclude these wipes from the definitions of solid and hazardous waste for solvent-contaminated wipes sent to a laundry or dry cleaner and solvent-contaminated wipes sent to a landfill or combustion facility, provided certain conditions are met. If the rule goes final, states with approved RCRA programs would have to adopt the rule into their own hazardous waste regulations before generators could take advantage of this regulatory relief.

The EPA is currently seeking comment on the proposed rule and the risk analysis used. The comment period is through December 28, 2009.

Tags: EPA, Non-Hazardous Waste

A Cautionary Tale from the Annals of Emergency Spill Response

Posted by Mark Campanale on Oct 9, 2009 8:09:00 AM

 

Doug Graham

"Responders? We don't need no stinkin' responders!"

OK, here's the scenario: Our hypothetical employer- (factory, institution, research facility, hospital, take your pick) makes an executive decision to "out-source" all hazardous chemical emergency response actions to an outside contractor. All employees are instructed that in the case of a chemical spill, they are not to respond, but to call the internal emergency contact person, who will then call the outside spill response service provider. Hands off, nice and neat, no internal hazmat response team, no need for emergency spill response (HAZWOPER) training of employees, it's all good, right? . . . . . . . . right?

Not so fast. What this employer does not realize is that in the event of a release they are in fact:

1) deciding if the incident could threaten human health or the environment; ]

2) implementing an incident command system;

3) assigning roles and responsibilities;

4) implementing defensive and/or offensive response actions;

5) notifying, or failing to notify, outside agencies; and the list goes on!

This sure sounds like "responding", and a lot like the stuff that's covered in a good emergency response training class!

The question now becomes, are all the people involved in the response trained in accordance with their anticipated rolls and response actions? Also, have they the knowledge and tools to make the correct decisions and perform assigned tasks?

Crucial decisions are often made in the initial stages of a hazardous chemical release, often by employees not always thought of as "emergency responders". According to OSHA's emergency response training standard- 29 CFR 1910.120(q) (HAZWOPER), an employee must be trained to the level to which they are expected to respond- awareness level, operations level, or technician level.

A simple way to approach this is to think of employees as fitting into one of these three categories:

1. Those who may be first to discover a hazardous chemical release and are expected only to recognize a potential threat, run away, warn others in the area to do the same, and then call for help; or
2. those who may come back to take defensive actions at a safe distance; or
3. those who will put on a full chemical protective suit, atmosphere-supplying respirator, and perform reconnaissance or take offensive actions in areas that could be a threat.
Yup, those are the basic descriptions for the three levels of OSHA HAZWOPER training.

So, in conclusion, if we go back to our hypothetical employer, we see that hiring an outside spill contractor only serves to add a tool to the emergency coordinator's tool bag, just an additional role under the employer's incident command structure. They've neither transferred responsibility, reduced decision making, nor removed the need for employee training.

 

 

Tags: Training, OSHA, Hazardous Chemicals