Proposal for a “Harmonized” strategy for the assessment of the HP 14 property

Abstract

In Europe, the decision whether waste is hazardous or not is based on 15 properties, among them the HP 14 property ("ecotoxic": waste that presents or may present immediate or delayed risks for 1 or more sectors of the environment). This document describes a strategy for assessing the HP 14 property, based on a combination of 2 approaches: the summation of classified compounds in the waste carried out according to the regulation on Classification, Labeling and Packaging (CLP) of substances and mixtures and the usage of the results of biotests performed on waste eluates and solid wastes. The proposal is based mainly on recommendations of a European ring test carried out in 2007, the work performed in the CEN/TC 292/WG 7 standardization working group, and the results of various research projects regarding the ecotoxicological characterization of waste carried out mainly in France and Germany. Examples are provided showing that, using this approach, a distinction between hazardous and nonhazardous wastes is possible, independent of which type of threshold values is used (currently, both effect concentrations [EC] or lowest ineffective dilutions [LID] values have been used successfully). Furthermore, a battery of tests (3 using waste eluates and 3 using solid waste samples, plus, under certain conditions, a genotoxicity test) is recommended for the ecotoxicological testing of wastes. We propose to consider this combined approach when defining the legal requirements for the ecotoxicological classification of wastes.