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, I i § '
; I An environmental protection publication (SW-138) in the solid waste management series
'^ENVIRONMENTS PROTECTION AGENCY/1975
fH*
!' 1 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
j' f Washington, D.C. 20402 - Price 85 cents
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Danger
Hazardous wastes are the particularly dange
discards of our highly industrialized, science-j
hr.^.l~«~ 1-- '
rous
-and-
0 -, — .^^o^iianicu, science-
technology-based society. They should be disposed of
carefully, but sometimes they are not. Sometimes they are
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put in open dumps, in landfills designed only for residential
refuse, in the ocean, or they are just left around in
warehouses. Consider what can happen:
® A factory begins depositing chemical wastes in a
nearby city dump. Chemicals soon work their way into the
soil and down into a spring beneath the dump. Then from
the spring into a creek. Then from the creek into one of the
nation's major rivers. Result: dead fish and wildlife along
10 miles of the meandering creek, a creek so polluted it has
to be placed off-limits for livestock, fishing, and recreation.
The wastes contained poly chlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a
deadly chemical.
@ A commercial laboratory dumps some of its wastes
on the open ground within the plant. Soon the soil is
contaminated. Then the groundwater is contaminated and
becomes unsafe for drinking or for irrigation. The company
has to drill a system of recovery wells to try to recapture the
chemical wastes, which contained arsenic.
(§ Cattle kept downstream from a city landfill die.
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t
Tests reveal cyanide in the cattle and in water ponds.
Source: cyanide wastes dumped at the upstream landfill.
(§ Shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico haul in their nets.
To their surprise, besides delectable shellfish, the nets
contain drums bearing the names of two chemical
companies. The leaking drums damage nets and fishing
equipment and burn the skin and irritate the eyes of the
fishermen. The drums contain toxic chemical wastes.
(§ In the warehouse of a local weed control agency in
rural America, someone discovers several drums of a 15-
year-old chemical once used to sterilize soil. The drums are
taken to a remote area and left there. A rifle shot rings out.
A drum explodes. Had the drums been jarred while at the
warehouse, several people would have been killed, for the
drums of obsolete chemicals had slowly, imperceptibly,
turned into time bombs.
(§ At another city landfill, wastes from homes and
industries have been dumped and buried for years. The
landfill closes. Four years pass. Suddenly, chemical and
biological contaminants are detected in the groundwater,
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the result of leaching from the landfill. To prevent further
deterioration of the underground reservoir that provides
drinking water for thousands of people, millions of dollars
may have to be spent undoing past damage.
(^ Several people with disturbing symptoms are
admitted to a hospital. Tests show they are suffering from
arsenic poisoning. Investigations reveal the source: well
water contaminated by arsenic waste buried 30 years earlier
on nearby farmland.
® On the beaches of a Southeastern State, glass
containers about 5 to 8 inches long are washed ashore from
the Atlantic. Investigators determine that the containers
were buried at sea shortly after World War II but were
broken free of their crates by undersea turbulence. The
public is warned not to touch the easily broken containers;
they are filled with carbon disulfide, a gas so lethal it could
kill if brought in contact with the skin or if inhaled.
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These incidents have several things in common: each
was a real-life episode of recent years. The villain each time
was a hazardous waste. And each episode occurred because
proper control over the storage, treatment, and disposal of
hazardous wastes was lacking. They are but a few of the
incidents that could be cited to demonstrate the great need
for improved control over hazardous wastes.
The United States in recent years has begun to come to
grips with the problems of air and water pollution, but the
land remains relatively unprotected from many hazardous
discards. And as the laws enacted to control air and water
pollution are implemented, the pressures on the land are
increasing. Many hazardous materials once emitted into the
air or dumped in our rivers, lakes, and oceans are winding
up on the land. Unless adequately controlled, these
substances can eventually get into the air or water
nevertheless. Or they can continue indefinitely on the land,
still hazardous but often forgotten and unsuspected.
Foreseeing the assault on the land, Congress wrote into
the Solid Waste Disposal Act as amended by the Resource
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Recovery Act of 1970 a requirement that the Federal
Government study the hazardous waste problem and submit
a report and recommendations for action. This has been
done by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),
and legislation to regulate the generation, treatment,
transport, and disposal of hazardous wastes is now being
formulated by the Congress. Meanwhile, EPA is pursuing a
program which includes determining the quantity and
composition of hazardous wastes and their sources;
identifying and assessing safe treatment and disposal
methods; developing criteria for proper processing and
disposal of the hazardous wastes; understanding the health
and environmental effects of improper hazardous waste
management; and relaying to industry and State and local
governments information on the state of the art of
hazardous waste management technology.
With this booklet, EPA seeks to acquaint the interested
public with the scope of the hazardous waste problem and
to outline what can be done to safeguard the public and the
environment.
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The
R-oblem
k, *
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The fundamental fact about hazardous wastes is that
they are a menace to human health and the environment.
They can poison, burn, maim, blind, and kill people and
other living organisms. They may snuff out life immediately
when inhaled, swallowed, or brought in contact with the
skin. They may wreak their havoc slowly over time,
affecting the nervous system, causing cancers, or spawning
birth defects. Some are nondegradable and persist in nature
indefinitely. Some may accumulate in living things. Some
may work their way into the food chain.
In the water they may kill fish, shellfish, and wildlife.
They may wipe out aquatic life on which fish feed. They may
damage or kill plants and trees when present in the soil, in
the air, or in irrigation water.
A hazardous waste, in short, is any waste or
combination of wastes that poses a substantial danger, now
or in the future, to human, plant, or animal life and which
therefore cannot be handled or disposed of without special
precautions.
Hazardous wastes are with us as solids, liquids, gases,
and sludges. They may be toxic chemicals, acids, or
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caustics. They may catch fire or explode at normal
temperatures and pressures or when exposed to air or water.
Some may be set off by an electrostatic charge, others by
being dropped or jarred. Some are highly sensitive to heat
and friction. Hazardous wastes come in many other forms:
biological materials, chemical and biological warfare agents,
and radioactive materials.
* JH- **'
\
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l/l/her<2udo
Ihey come from?
Industry generates at least 10 million tons of
nonradioactive hazardous wastes a year (this is about 10
percent of all wastes produced by industry), and the amount
is growing at a rate of 5 to 10 percent annually.
Approximately 90 percent of industrial hazardous wastes are
in liquid or semiliquid form. Almost all of the 10 million
tons is toxic. Industry's toxic throwaways fall into one or
more of these categories: inorganic toxic metals; salts,
acids, or bases; synthetic organics; flammables; and
explosives.
Some of the toxic metal waste comes from mining and
metallurgy and from the electroplating and metal-finishing
industries. Copper, lead, and zinc smelting produce about
40,000 tons of arsenic in flue dusts each year. And some
30,000 tons of chromium-bearing wastes are produced by
the metal-finishing industry each year.
Synthetic organic wastes include halogenated
hydrocarbon pesticides (such as endrin), polychlorinated
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biphenyls, and phenols. Some 5,00
tons of synthetic organic pesticic
wastes are produced annually. St
another hazard: the approximate
250 million pesticide containers th
must be disposed of each year. (Evi
though a container may be consi
ered empty by the user, there are re
due pesticides. People have be
made sick and livestock have be
killed by coming in contact w
"empty" pesticide drums and bags.)
The flammable wastes are ma
ly contaminated organic solvei
Other wastes that can burn inch
oils, pesticides, plasticizers, orga
sludges, and off-specification che
cals.
The explosive wastes include
solete munitions, wastes from
explosives-manufacturing indu:
and contaminated industrial g;
The Department of Defense has
cumulated some 150,000 tons
obsolete ammunition that used t
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dumped at sea; the discarded bombs, shells, bullets, etc., are
now stored pending development of a suitable disposal method.
Hospitals add about 170,000 tons of pathological
materials to the hazardous waste load each year. They
include human and animal remains, tissue obtained in
surgery or for tests, cultures, hypodermic needles, outdated
or off-specification drugs, and soiled bandages.
There are biological warfare materials, such as
antipersonnel and anticrop viruses and bacteria, and
chemical warfare materials that have been stockpiled
pending treatment and final disposal. Approximately 70,000
tons of residual salts will be left after chemical warfare
agents are properly treated; the salts themselves may be
hazardous and will require careful disposal.
And there are radioactive wastes, those high- and low-
level residues from nuclear power plants and fuel
reprocessing facilities; medical and industrial research labs ;
and the weapons and research facilities of the U.S. Energy
Research and Development Administration and the
Department of Defense. Government figures are unavailable
because of their correlation with weapons production, but
radioactive wastes from the nuclear power industry and
other private sources are estimated to total about 24,000
tons a year —and the amount grows as each new nuclear
power plant comes on line.
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/Hefhods
commonly used
There is no known way to render radioactive wastes
harmless. They take from months to hundreds of thousands
of years to decay into harmless substances. Radioactive
wastes, whether in gas, liquid, or solid form, must therefore
be contained and isolated and allowed to decay under
carefully controlled conditions until and unless methods are
developed to "neutralize" the radionuclides. (Radioactive
waste disposal is the responsibility of the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.)
Similarly, some nonradioactive hazardous wastes cannot
be neutralized. Some chemical wastes —such as arsenites and
arsenic trioxide—must also be stored in secure containers
and locations until proper treatment and disposal
technology is developed.
However—and this is the key to effective
regulation—technology is available today to treat and
safely dispose of most nonradioactive hazardous wastes.
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A few industrial firms and other waste sources are moving
ahead to develop systems for safe management of their hazar-
dous wastes. But aside from these exceptions, the methods
currently used are inadequate and create unnecessary hazards.
The most common methods of getting rid of hazardous
wastes are dumping them on the land, burying them in the
land, injecting them into deep wells, and dumping them in
the ocean. Sometimes explosives are detonated and burned
in the open. And some organic chemicals, biological wastes,
and flammable materials are incinerated. Each of these
commonly used disposal methods is a potential threat to
public health and the environment.
When simply dumped on the land, hazardous wastes
may percolate or leach into groundwater and thus
contaminate or poison water supplies. They may be carried
by rain runoff directly into streams, rivers, lakes, and
oceans. They may pollute the air when burned deliberately
or spontaneously, or merely when blown about by the wind.
They may contaminate food supplies. At some
manufacturing plants, hazardous wastes are stored in open
ponds or lagoons; those can also pose pollution problems.
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Sanitary landfills — where wastes are covered with earth
each day —are preferable. But unless specially designed, a
sanitary landfill may still pollute surface and ground water,
and venting gas may pollute the air.
Injecting hazardous wastes into deep wells can pollute
groundwater. (Indeed, EPA policy opposes deep-well
injection unless all other alternatives pose even worse
environmental dangers and unless extensive hydrological
and geological studies assure that groundwater will not be
polluted.)
Ocean dumping poses a threat to marine life and the
ecological balance of the seas, as well as to humans who
come in contact with improperly sealed and weighted
hazardous materials dropped into the oceans.
Burning hazardous wastes in open fires or in
incinerators or exploding them can pollute the air. And the
residues from incineration may themselves be hazardous and
thus still require careful disposal.
In sum, business as usual in the disposal of hazardous
wastes is just not good enough, as the episodes cited at the
beginning of the booklet illustrate.
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£!.-*:i4
obou
oesfcides
Not too long ago, a 2V£ -year-old boy was hospitalized in a
rural community. The boy's illness was diagnosed as
organophosphate poisoning. The boy had been playing in a pile of
55-gallon drums about 50 feet from the front door of his home.
The city had obtained the drums from an aerial insecticide
applicator and planned to use them as trash containers. In fact,
the city had urged residents to come by and pick up a drum.
Investigation showed that the drums contained enough pesticide
residues to harm anyone, child or adult, who touched them.
Near-tragic incidents of that kind may now be avoided. Under
the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, EPA has
issued regulations concerning the storage and disposal of pesticides
and pesticide containers. Details on the safety requirements for
storing and disposing of pesticides and containers are available
from EPA regional offices or EPA's Office of Public Affairs,
Washington, B.C. 20460.
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Who
Can
Done?
Although at present there is no direct Federal
regulatory authority, Congress is formulating legislation to
regulate the generation, treatment, transport, and disposal
of hazardous wastes which encompasses several factors:
standards for the handling, treatment, labeling, and
disposal of hazardous wastes; special disposal sites;
enforcement; and using existing technology and stimulating
the development of needed new technology to safeguard
public health and the environment from the dangers of
hazardous wastes.
Several of the State governments have begun to move
ahead in regulating hazardous wastes. For example, some
States are regulating the transport of hazardous wastes, with a
few even requiring reports and records from the waste
generators. California, Minnesota, and Oregon have passed
comprehensive hazardous waste management legislation. With
or without Federal legislation, the States are focal points for
proper management of hazardous wastes, and their
capabilities must be encouraged to grow.
The available technology for processing hazardous wastes
presents an array of possibilities. Using physical, chemical,
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thermal, and biological processes, scientists and engineers can
extract useful materials from many hazardous wastes and put
them back into the production stream. They can convert
man's hazardous wastes into harmless materials. They can
destroy many hazardous wastes. And as for dangerous residues
from these processes (and hazardous wastes for which
treatment technology has not yet been perfected), the experts
know how to isolate and store them safely.
Physical treatment processes can be used to reduce the
volume of wastes at the factory where they are generated.
Waste brines can be concentrated by evaporation. Solids can
be separated out of liquid wastes. Many soluble organic
substances can be removed from liquid wastes by carbon
sorption. Following such treatment, the waste can be moved
more readily into storage, onto further processing, or to final
disposal.
Chemical processes can be used to neutralize some
wastes. Toxic metals like arsenic, cadmium, mercury, and
antimony can be extracted by sulfide precipitation. Cyanide
and chromium in some wastes can be treated with the
oxidation-reduction process.
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Some liquid and solid hazardous wastes can be
destroyed by burning them in special incinerators. Some
hazardous wastes can be converted into useful fuel gases,
oils, or coke by pyrolysis, a process that chemically
decomposes wastes by heating them to a high temperature
without oxygen.
Some organic wastes can be rendered harmless by
micro-organisms which will feed upon them.
In brief, a rational hazardous waste management
program would make maximum use of existing technology
to safeguard public health and the environment by:
(§ Reducing the amount of hazardous wastes generated
in the first place.
© Concentrating wastes at the source to reduce
handling and transportation problems.
® Stimulating "waste exchange." (One factory's
hazardous wastes can become another's feedstock; for
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instance, acid and solvent wastes from some industries can
be utilized by others without processing.)
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new treatment facilities at industrial plants. It will require a
system of regional treatment and disposal facilities across
the nation, especially designed for dangerous wastes that
industry cannot dispose of safely. It will require a
commitment by industry and government to make the
program work. It will require acceptance by the public of
the fact that properly located, designed, built, and operated
regional treatment and disposal facilities, with extensive
monitoring systems and safeguards, will be safe and will
greatly reduce the dangers that hazardous wastes now pose
to the public.
And it will require public vigilance and support to
make sure that government — at all levels —and industry
invest the money and manpower needed to regulate
hazardous wastes properly.
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whof can
you do?
Concerned citizens, especially those acting through voluntary
citizen organizations to work for a cleaner and safer environment,
can contribute significantly to wiser management of hazardous
wastes. They can help inform the public about the dangers of
hazardous wastes, and they can help insure that appropriate
action is taken to cope with those dangers.
They can find out what the situation is in their own
communities and States: What hazardous wastes are being
produced? What are the sources? How are the wastes handled,
treated, transported, disposed of? Do control agencies have
adequate authority, funds, and staff to implement hazardous
waste management laws and regulations?
And they can support, encourage, and stimulate control
agencies and industries to move steadily and speedily toward sound
hazardous waste management.
Concerned citizens, in brief, can be a vital force in public
education for constructive action to cope with hazardous wastes.
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Crucia
ssue
How we manage —or mismanage —the nation's
hazardous wastes is a crucial environmental issue with vast
implications for public health and for the integrity of the
ecological systems on which we depend for life itself.
It is environmental folly to continue to dump or burn
those wastes irresponsibly. And in an era of growing
shortages of many materials, it is economic folly to continue
to throw away valuable resources as "wastes."
While recovery and reuse of valuable resources
contained in hazardous wastes will offset to a degree the
higher price of safe hazardous waste management,
environmentally sound treatment and disposal of
dangerous materials will, in general, mean higher costs for
the generators of those wastes. That, in turn, may mean
higher prices for consumers of some products.
But as with air and water pollution control, there are
no free lunches. All of us —industry and the general public
alike —must be prepared to foot the bill for a safe and
healthful environment. The costs and the risks of not
bringing hazardous wastes under proper control are
infinitely greater.
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1975 O - 572-207
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