Hazardous waste generation hard to quantify

Abstract

In the past decade, hazardous waste, how it is generated and how it is disposed of, has become one of the most emotional environmental issues to grip the U.S. Two laws—the Resource Conservation & Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation & Liability Act, more commonly called Superfund—have been enacted to deal strictly with such wastes. The results of these laws have been controversial. One difficult problem is just keeping track of the waste. Quantification has been nearly impossible, and different definitions and calculation methods used by various groups have led to widely disparate numbers. Two new reports on the chemical industry's handling of hazardous wastes have just been issued that demonstrate this problem. The Chemical Manufacturers Association has been conducting hazardous waste surveys of its members since 1981, collecting information from hundreds of chemical plants on their waste practices. The continuity of the surveys has allowed CMA to observe trends ...