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PubMed1991

Innovative technologies for contaminated site remediation: focus on bioremediation.

Bioremediation, the process by which hazardous substances are degraded by microorganisms, is at the forefront of a larger group of innovative remediation technologies being applied at hazardous waste sites worldwide. Although the process of bioremediation has been utilized for decades in the field of wastewater engineering, its application to soils and groundwater at hazardous waste sites is fairly new and still undergoing intensive development. This article is intended to provide both an overview of the state of practice of bioremediation in hazardous waste remediation operations, and an inventory of issues to consider when evaluating the use of this technology for a contaminated site. These topics will be the subject matter of a unique Bioremediation Satellite seminar to be broadcast on January 9, 1992. The seminar, a joint venture between the Air and Waste Management Association (A&WMA) and the Hazardous Waste Action Coalition (HWAC), is the first in a series of satellite seminars that will deal with innovative hazardous waste remediation technologies. The intent of these seminars is to design programs which will make hazardous waste practitioners more familiar with innovative remediation technologies so that they will consider using the technologies in future clean-up operations.

Biodegradation, Environmental↗

PubMed1993

A study of disposal of hospital wastes in a rural teaching hospital.

The present study was carried out in order to observe and analyse the waste disposal patterns in a 500 bedded, multidisciplinary hospital located in a rural area. The hospital under study is a teaching hospital attached to a Medical college and has been functioning for over ten years. Data were collected by means of pre-structured interviews and on-the-spot observations of the various stages in the waste disposal chain. It was observed that the hospital does not have a documented wastes management and disposal policy. The disposal of wastes is not properly supervised and is exclusively entrusted to the junior most staff from the house keeping department. The disposal of all categories of hospital wastes, in general, leaves much to be desired and even pathological wastes were observed to be disposed off, on the open ground with scant regard to aesthetic considerations. Both the internal as well as external transportation of hospital wastes were found to be far from satisfactory.

Data Collection↗

PubMed1982

"Hazardous" wastes of the clinical chemistry laboratory.

The authors of this article highlight recent government initiatives in the field of hazardous waste management, and present data on the hazardous wastes of a representative clinical chemistry laboratory. They cite a number of reasons why pathologists should begin addressing this issue, and hope that the results of the study will stimulate the much needed discussion.

Laboratories↗

PubMed1997

Improving the safety of street-vended food.

An integrated plan of action for improving street food involving health and other regulatory authorities, vendors and consumers should address not only food safety, but also environmental health management, including consideration of inadequate sanitation and waste management, possible environmental pollution, congestion and disturbances to traffic. However, WHO cautions that, in view of their importance in the diets of urban populations, particularly the socially disadvantaged, every effort should be made to preserve the benefits provided by varied, inexpensive and often nutritious street food. Therefore, authorities concerned with street food management must balance efforts aimed at reducing the negative aspects on the environment with the benefits of street food and its important role in the community. Health authorities charged with responsibility for food safety control should match risk management action to the level of assessed risk. The rigorous application of codes and enforcement of regulations more suited to larger and permanent food service establishments is unlikely to be justifiable. Such rigorous application of codes and regulations may result in disappearance of the trade with consequent aggravation of hunger and malnutrition. Moreover, most codes and regulations have not been based on any systematic identification and assessment of health hazards associated with different types of foods and operations as embodied in the HACCP approach which has been recognized by Codex as the most cost-effective means for promoting food safety. WHO encourages the development of regulations that empower vendors to take greater responsibility for the preparation of safe food, and of codes of practice based on the HACCP system.

Food Contamination↗

PubMed1994

Biological life support for manned missions by ESA.

The anticipated evolution of life support technologies for ESA, considering both the complementary life support system requirements and the missions' characteristics, is presented. Based on these results, promising biological life support technologies for manned space missions have been selected by ESA either for their intrinsic ability and performance in effecting specific tasks for atmosphere-, water-, waste-management versus physico-chemical alternatives and/or for longer-term application to a more ecological concept (CES) focusing ultimately on food production. Actual status and plan for terrestrial and space testing of biological life support presented focusing on the "task specific" decontamination technology of the Biological Air Filter (BAF), and on food reprocessing technologies from biodegradable wastes with the MELISSA microbial ecosystem.

Air Conditioning↗

PubMed2003

Will revolution bring chaos?

A waste revolution, potentially greater in impact than the changes in clinical waste disposal practices in the 1990s, is just over the horizon. There are many new initiatives and regulations relating to waste, its production, recycling and disposal. This article focuses on hazardous waste, a new category of waste with a much broader scope than the current special waste category. The volume of waste to be categorised as hazardous is expected to triple. One of the major reasons for change has occurred due to a long-running battle between the UK and other EU members about whether co-disposal of inert, biodegradable and hazardous waste in landfill sites is environmentally acceptable. The UK argued that co-disposal was acceptable but lost the argument. Consequently from July 2004 the EU Landfill Directive banning co-disposal will come into effect. According to the Government, this will mean that only 14 of the 182 commercial landfills that currently accept hazardous waste will continue to do so after July 2004. The expectation is that hazardous waste, such as electronic equipment, will require pre-treatment before landfilling. Meanwhile the landfill tax is expected to rise from 13 Pounds per tonne in 2002-03 to approximately 35 Pounds per tonne by 2007. In the near future, more waste will be classified as hazardous, it will cost much more to dispose of, waste management practices will need to change and the risk of breaking the law will increase. This article explains the actions that should be considered now to avoid chaos as the revolution takes place.

Environmental Pollutants↗

PubMed2005

Comparison of external costs between dry tomb and bioreactor landfills: taking intergenerational effects seriously.

Dry tomb and bioreactor landfills were analyzed with respect to their external costs in an intergenerational cost-benefit analysis in a partial framework which enabled a sounder comparison to be carried out between these two technologies from a socio-economic viewpoint. Obviously, this approach was only a first step for building a comprehensive basis of any environmental as well as fiscal policy in the field of waste management. All external costs are identified and evaluated in three different scenarios, corresponding to a worst case, a best guess and a best case. Obviously, discounting is crucial with respect to an intergenerational perspective. Generation-adjusted discounting (GAD) was applied to take into account equity as well as efficiency criteria, in order to deal with three different types of uncertainties that are decisive in waste policy decisions: a physical uncertainty is captured by introducing our three different scenarios; a macroeconomic uncertainty is taken into consideration by calculating present values using different real growth rates; and a microeconomic uncertainty is taken into account by considering individual peculiarities reflected in their subjective time preference rate. The findings show, that whenever there is a low real GDP growth of less than 1%, the bioreactor is generally superior to the dry tomb (lower present values of external costs). This statement becomes more valid as the growth rate decreases. However, whenever there are high positive growth rates, it is the dry tomb technology which is superior to the bioreactor system.

Bioreactors↗

PubMed2004

Cryo-comminution of plastic waste.

Recycling of plastics is a big issue in terms of environmental sustainability and of waste management. The development of proper technologies for plastic recycling is recognised as a priority. To achieve this aim, the technologies applied in mineral processing can be adapted to recycling systems. In particular, the improvement of comminution technologies is one of the main actions to improve the quality of recycled plastics. The aim of this work is to point out suitable comminution processes for different types of plastic waste. Laboratory comminution tests have been carried out under different conditions of temperature and sample pre-conditioning adopting as refrigerant agents CO2 and liquid nitrogen. The temperature has been monitored by thermocouples placed in the milling chamber. Also different internal mill screens have been adopted. A proper procedure has been set up in order to obtain a selective comminution and a size reduction suitable for further separation treatment. Tests have been performed on plastics coming from medical plastic waste and from a plant for spent lead batteries recycling. Results coming from different mill devices have been compared taking into consideration different indexes for representative size distributions. The results of the performed tests show as cryo-comminution improves the effectiveness of size reduction of plastics, promotes liberation of constituents and increases specific surface size of comminuted particles in comparison to a comminution process carried out at room temperature.

Carbon Dioxide↗

PubMed2006

Policy development from the industry perspective.

The responsibility and burden for implementation of any option for the disposition of low-activity radioactive waste will primarily reside with the industries that generate the waste and those that provide the necessary waste management and disposal services. Unfortunately, there is no general consensus among these industries on the multiple policy issues that are critical to the application of an effective management and disposal program. This paper discusses the various policy issues that affect these industries and the problems that will likely occur during the course of their activities. These policy issues include public and political concern, opposition, and reaction; multiple and sometimes conflicting government agency jurisdiction, regulation, and policy; issues relating to the transition to a new comprehensive system; conflicts between the interests of the various industry groups; and operational, radiation safety, and regulatory implementation issues. For these reasons, the acceptable options may be limited. Case studies of various waste streams are included to show the specific impact and problems that these issues can create.

Decision Making↗

PubMed2004

Multilevel cycle of anthropogenic copper.

A comprehensive contemporary cycle for stocks and flows of copper is characterized and presented, incorporating information on extraction, processing, fabrication and manufacturing, use, discard, recycling, final disposal, and dissipation. The analysis is performed on an annual basis, ca. 1994, at three discrete governmental unit levels--56 countries or country groups that together comprise essentially all global anthropogenic copper stocks and flows, nine world regions, and the planet as a whole. Cycles for all of these are presented and discussed, and a "best estimate" global copper cycle is constructed to resolve aggregation discrepancies. Among the most interesting results are (1) transformation rates and recycling rates in apparently similar national economies differ by factors of two or more (country level); (2) the discard flows that have the greatest potential for copper recycling are those with low magnitude flows but high copper concentrations--electronics, electrical equipment, and vehicles (regional level); (3) worldwide, about 53% of the copper that was discarded in various forms was recovered and reused or recycled (global level); (4) the highest rate of transfer of discarded copper to repositories is into landfills, but the annual amount of copper deposited in mine tailings is nearly as high (global level); and (5) nearly 30% of copper mining occurred merely to replace copper that was discarded. The results provide a framework for similar studies of other anthropogenic resource cycles as well as a basis for supplementary studies in resource stocks, industrial resource utilization, waste management, industrial economics, and environmental impacts.

Conservation of Natural Resources↗

PubMed2006

International standards related to the classification and deregulation of radioactive waste.

Although solid radioactive waste management is mainly a national concern, there are some aspects that have international implications. One important example is the decommissioning of nuclear facilities, which results in the release of materials that could be reused and recycled. It is possible that these materials could enter international trade, especially if the material is a metal. It is clearly desirable, therefore, to have appropriate international standards to help regulate trade. This paper describes recent international developments relating to the establishment of radiological criteria for the release of materials from regulatory control (clearance). There have already been some experiences of clearance and the transfer of recycled materials within Europe, and this paper reviews that experience. It also discusses recent developments in relation to the international classification of radioactive waste.

Decision Making↗

PubMed1987

An overview of Japanese CELSS research activities.

Many research activities regarding Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS) have been conducted and continued all over the world since the 1960's and the concept of CELSS is now changing from Science Fiction to Scientific Reality. Development of CELSS technology is inevitable for future long duration stays of human beings in space, for lunar base construction and for manned mars flight programs. CELSS functions can be divided into two categories, Environment Control and Material Recycling. Temperature, humidity, total atmospheric pressure and partial pressure of oxygen and carbon dioxide, necessary for all living things, are to be controlled by the environment control function. This function can be performed by technologies already developed and used as the Environment Control Life Support System (ECLSS) of Space Shuttle and Space Station. As for material recycling, matured technologies have not yet been established for fully satisfying the specific metabolic requirements of each living thing including human beings. Therefore, research activities for establishing CELSS technology should be focused on material recycling technologies using biological systems such as plants and animals and physico-chemical systems, for example, a gas recycling system, a water purifying and recycling system and a waste management system. Based on these considerations, Japanese research activities have been conducted and will be continued under the tentative guideline of CELSS research activities as shown in documents /1/, /2/. The status of the over all activities are discussed in this paper.

Air Conditioning↗

PubMed2003

Hospital waste operational procedures: a case study in Brazil.

This study analysed the hospital waste management practices and their implications to public health in the city of Belo Horizonte, south eastern Brazil. Belo Horizonte is a regional capital city located 300 miles from the famous city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is only 100 years old and is the first city planned in Brazil. It was originally planned for 300,000 people but, today, it is home to more than 2 million people. This study assessed the operational procedures at five hospitals (170 to 450 beds) with different medical specialties in order to analyse their major waste problems. This study also gathered data on different types of treatment and disposal procedures used by waste generators, which enabled an estimate on the amount of on-site and off-site waste generated.

Brazil↗

PubMed1997

Rubber tire leachates in the aquatic environment.

Tires have a deleterious effect on the environment. This review discusses the background of scrap tires discarded in the environment, including tire composition, adverse environmental effects, threats to public health and safety, and solid waste management. Despite the widespread use of scrap tires in environmental applications, both land-based and aquatic, data on the indicators of environmental degradation are extremely scarce. Indicators of environmental degradation include analysis of chemicals within the water and sediment, analysis of contaminants within organisms, and analysis of the biological effects of these compounds on plants, animals, microbes, and organelles. Although these indicators are most useful when used in parallel, a review of the available information on chemical characterization of tire leachate from tire storage facilities, manufacturing, usage in recycling applications, and toxicity exposure studies, of vegetation surveys from waste tire areas and reviews of mammalian tire product toxicity, and of toxicity, mutagenicity, and carcinogenicity of tire exposure in experimental aquatic animals, microbes, and organelles is presented. The major characteristics of these studies are discussed in specific sections. The "Discussion and Conclusions" section discusses and summarizes the biological effects and chemical characterization of tire leachates. A global environmental perspective is included to improve our understanding of the deficiency of the current knowledge of tire leachate toxicity from various sources and to encourage interdisciplinary studies to establish the pattern of pollution associated with waste tire management.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

Life cycle assessment of EPS and CPB inserts: design considerations and end of life scenarios.

Expanded polystyrene (EPS) and corrugated paperboard (CPB) are used in many industrial applications, such as containers, shock absorbers or simply as inserts. Both materials pose two different types of environmental problems. The first is the pollution and resource consumption that occur during the production of these materials; the second is the growing landfills that arise out of the excessive disposal of these packaging materials. Life cycle assessment or LCA will be introduced in this paper as a useful tool to compare the environmental performance of both EPS and CPB throughout their life cycle stages. This paper is divided into two main parts. The first part investigates the environmental impacts of the production of EPS and CPB from 'cradle-to-gate', comparing two inserts--both the original and proposed new designs. In the second part, LCA is applied to investigate various end-of-life cases for the same materials. The study will evaluate the environmental impacts of the present waste management practices in Singapore. Several 'what-if' cases are also discussed, including various percentages of landfilling and incineration. The SimaPro LCA Version 5.0 software's Eco-indicator 99 method is used to investigate the following five environmental impact categories: climate change, acidification/eutrophication, ecotoxicity, fossil fuels and respiratory inorganics.

Environmental Monitoring↗

PubMed2004

Utilization of enzymes for environmental applications.

Enzymes are powerful tools that help sustain a clean environment in several ways. They are utilized for environmental purposes in a number of industries including agro-food, oil, animal feed, detergent, pulp and paper, textile, leather, petroleum, and specialty chemical and biochemical industry. Enzymes also help to maintain an unpolluted environment through their use in waste management. Recombinant DNA technology, protein engineering, and rational enzyme design are the emerging areas of research pertaining to environmental applications of enzymes. The future will also see the employment of various technologies including gene shuffling, high throughput screening, and nanotechnology. This article presents an overview of the enzymatic applications in pollution control and the promising research avenues in this area.

Biodegradation, Environmental↗

PubMed2003

[Numerical simulation of moisture movement in landfill bioreactors under the condition of leachate recirculation].

Landfill bioreactor is a new international development field in the municipal solid waste management. It can reduce the difficulty of leachate treatment and accelerate the landfill stability process. The general moisture distribution rules in landfills were analyzed in this paper and a three dimensional transient mathematical model was established to simulate the saturated-unsaturated moisture movement under the condition of leachate recirculation to landfills. The model was solved by Galerkin finite element method and tested with Theis well formula. The functions of different leahcate recirculation designs in landfill bioreactors were implemented in the model. Thus, the moisture movement in the landfill could be simulated under the condition of leachate recirculation, which provides theoretical basis for the effective design and operation of landfill bioreactor.

Biodegradation, Environmental↗

PubMed2004

Using explanatory crop models to develop simple tools for Advanced Life Support system studies.

System-level analyses for Advanced Life Support require mathematical models for various processes, such as for biomass production and waste management, which would ideally be integrated into overall system models. Explanatory models (also referred to as mechanistic or process models) would provide the basis for a more robust system model, as these would be based on an understanding of specific processes. However, implementing such models at the system level may not always be practicable because of their complexity. For the area of biomass production, explanatory models were used to generate parameters and multivariable polynomial equations for basic models that are suitable for estimating the direction and magnitude of daily changes in canopy gas-exchange, harvest index, and production scheduling for both nominal and off-nominal growing conditions.

Algorithms↗