IMPACT PROFILES
Final report
Prepared for:
The Department of the Environment
Prepared by:
Ascend Waste and Environment Pty Ltd
Date::7 June 2015
Geoff Latimer
Project Number:
Project # 15001AG
The health and environmental impacts of hazardous wastes
Project # 15001AG
Date: 7 June 2015
This report has been prepared for The Department of the Environment in accordance with the terms and conditions of appointment dated 6 January 2015, and is based on the assumptions and exclusions set out in our scope of work. The report must not be reproduced in whole or in part except with the prior consent of Ascend Waste and Environment Pty Ltd and subject to inclusion of an acknowledgement of the source.
Whilst reasonable attempts have been made to ensure that the contents of this report are accurate and complete at the time of writing, Ascend Waste and Environment Pty Ltd cannot accept any responsibility for any use of or reliance on the contents of this report by any third party.
© Ascend Waste and Environment Pty Ltd
VERSION CONTROL RECORD
Document File Name / Date Issued / Version / Author / ReviewerDraft first profiles for review / 11 March 2015 / Rev 0 / Geoff Latimer / Ian Rae
15001AG_AWE_Health Env Impacts draft report rev 0 / 27 April 2015 / Rev0 / Geoff Latimer / Ian Rae
15001AG_AWE_Health Env Impacts final report rev 0 / 7 June 2015 / Rev0 / Geoff Latimer / Ian Rae
Project # 15001AG / The health and environmental impacts of hazardous wastes
Contents
Page
1 Introduction 5
2 Summary report: Australia’s key hazardous waste impacts and risks 6
3 Hazardous waste impact profiles 16
3.1 Clinical waste from medical care in hospitals, medical centres and clinics 16
3.2 Wastes from the production and preparation of pharmaceutical products 22
3.3 Waste pharmaceuticals, drugs and medicines 26
3.4 Wastes from the production, formulation and use of biocides and phytopharmaceuticals 32
3.5 Wastes from the manufacture, formulation and use of wood preserving chemicals 39
3.6 Wastes from the production, formulation and use of organic solvent 44
3.7 Wastes from heat treatment and tempering operations containing cyanides 48
3.8 Waste mineral oils unfit for their originally intended use 51
3.9 Waste oils/water, hydrocarbons/water mixtures, emulsions 56
3.10 Waste substances and articles containing or contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and/or polychlorinated terphenyls (PCTs) and/or polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) 59
3.11 Waste tarry residues arising from refining, distillation and any pyrolytic treatment 63
3.12 Wastes from production, formulation and use of inks, dyes, pigments, paints, lacquers, varnish 66
3.13 Wastes from production, formulation and use of resins, latex, plasticizers, glues/ adhesives 70
3.14 Wastes of an explosive nature not subject to other legislation 74
3.15 Wastes from production, formulation and use of photographic chemicals and processing materials 78
3.16 Wastes resulting from surface treatment of metals and plastics 82
3.17 Residues arising from industrial waste disposal operations 86
3.18 Metal carbonyls 93
3.19 Beryllium; beryllium compounds 96
3.20 Hexavalent chromium compounds 99
3.21 Copper compounds 103
3.22 Zinc compounds 107
3.23 Arsenic; arsenic compounds 111
3.24 Selenium; selenium compounds 115
3.25 Cadmium; cadmium compounds 119
3.26 Antimony; antimony compounds 124
3.27 Tellurium; tellurium compounds 128
3.28 Mercury; mercury compounds 132
3.29 Thallium; thallium compounds 137
3.30 Lead; lead compounds 141
3.31 Inorganic fluorine compounds excluding calcium fluoride 146
3.32 Inorganic cyanides 150
3.33 Acidic solutions or acids in solid form 154
3.34 Basic solutions or bases in solid form 160
3.35 Asbestos (dust and fibres) 164
3.36 Organic phosphorus compounds 170
3.37 Organic cyanides 174
3.38 Phenols; phenol compounds including chlorophenols 177
3.39 Ethers 181
3.40 Halogenated organic solvents 186
3.41 Organic solvents excluding halogenated solvents 190
3.42 Any congener of polychlorinated dibenzo-furan 194
3.43 Any congener of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxin 198
3.44 Organohalogen compounds other than substances referred to in this list (e.g. Y39, Y41, Y42, Y43, Y44) 202
3.45 Other metal compounds (such as compounds of barium, cobalt, nickel and vanadium) 208
3.46 Other inorganic chemicals (such as inorganic sulfides, boron compounds, phosphorus compounds and non-toxic salts) 212
3.47 Other organic chemicals 216
3.48 Controlled putrescible/ organic waste 220
3.49 End of life tyres 225
List of Appendices
Appendix A: Basel Y-code to NEPM code conversion
Appendix B: NEPM code to Basel Y-code conversion
Appendix C: Approach to quantifying relative hazard
Project # 15001AG / The health and environmental impacts of hazardous wastes / Page 100Glossary of terms
The Act / Hazardous Waste (Regulation of Exports and Imports) Act 1989ANZSIC / Australia and New Zealand Standard Industry Codes
Basel Convention / The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal. The Convention puts an onus on exporting countries to ensure that hazardous wastes are managed in an environmentally sound manner in the country of import.
Controlled Waste / Waste that falls under the control of the Controlled Waste National Environment Protection Measure. Generally equivalent to hazardous waste, although definitional differences of the latter exist across jurisdictions
Controlled Waste NEPM / National Environment Protection (Movement of Controlled Waste between States and Territories) Measure.
CRT / Cathode ray tube
e-waste / Electrical and electronic equipment that has reached the end of its functional life. For the purposes of the scheme, this includes televisions and computers and their peripheral components
Hazard score / A quantification of comparative hazard (between wastes) expressed on a scale of 1 – 6 (in order of increasing hazard) , developed specifically for this project
Hazardous waste / A hazardous waste, as defined in the Australian Government’s National Waste Policy: Less waste, more resources (2009), is a substance or object that exhibits hazardous characteristics, is no longer fit for its intended use and requires disposal. According to the Act, hazardous waste means:
(a) waste prescribed by the regulations, where the waste has any of the characteristics mentioned in Annex III to the Basel Convention; or
(b) wastes covered by paragraph 1(a) of Article 1 of the Basel Convention; or
(c) household waste; or
(d) residues arising from the incineration of household waste; but does not include wastes covered by paragraph 4 of Article 1 of the Basel Convention.
Interstate data / Data collected about hazardous waste generated in one jurisdiction and treated in another, through cross-border transport under the Controlled Waste NEPM
Intrastate data / Data collected about hazardous waste generated, transported and treated within the one jurisdiction
kt / Kilotonnes (thousands of tonnes)
LPCL / Low POP concentration limit
Mt / Megatonnes (millions of tonnes)
NEPM / National Environment Protection (Movement of Controlled Waste between States and Territories) Measure 1998
NEPM codes / Alphanumeric codes, in the format A123, that are used to describe waste types under the Controlled Waste NEPM
PCB / Polychlorinated biphenyl
PFOS / Perfluorooctane sulfonate
POP / Persistent organic pollutant
POP-BDE / Persistent organic pollutants - bromodiphenyl ethers (various forms)
The Department / Department of the Environment
Tracking system / Jurisdiction-based hazardous waste tracking systems, which are in place in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria. These tracking systems can be either online, paper-based, or a combination of both these mechanisms.
Tracked data / Hazardous waste collected under the arrangements of a tracking system
Treatment / Treatment of waste is the removal, reduction or immobilisation of a hazardous characteristic to enable the waste to be reused, recycled, sent to an Energy from Waste facility or disposed.
Waste / (For data collation purposes) is materials or products that are unwanted or have been discarded, rejected or abandoned. Waste includes materials or products that are recycled, converted to energy, or disposed. Materials and products that are reused (for their original or another purpose without reprocessing) are not solid waste because they remain in use.
Waste arisings / Hazardous waste is said to ‘arise’ when it causes demand for processing, storage, treatment or disposal infrastructure.
Waste Code / Three-digit code typically used by jurisdictions to describe NEPM-listed wastes. These are also referred to as ’NEPM codes’ although it is noted that the actual codes do not appear in the NEPM itself.
Waste fate / Refers to the destination of the waste within the set of defined end points. It includes reuse, treatment, recycling, energy recovery, and disposal. Waste transfer and storage should not generally considered as a waste fate. The term fate does not infer that the waste material is destroyed or lost.
WEEE / Waste electrical and electronic equipment
Y-code / The Basel Convention’s waste coding or classification system which encompasses 47 wastes (Y1 – Y47).
Y+8 / A term introduced to describe those wastes that are reported in controlled waste tracking in Australia, but do not have a logical conversion in Y code terms, so have been reported to Basel as 8 new codes: ‘Y+8’ 1-8.
Project # 15001AG / The health and environmental impacts of hazardous wastes / Page 100
1 Introduction
The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal (Basel Convention), which regulates the movement of hazardous wastes across international boundaries, came into force in 1992, the same year that Australia became a signatory to it.
The Australian Government is obliged to submit an annual report to the Basel Secretariat containing the tonnages of hazardous wastes generated in the country each calendar year. The data must be reported using the Basel Convention’s classification system known as Y-codes. State and territory governments collect this data as part of their regulatory role in managing hazardous waste and its potential for impact on the environment and human health, and use their own classification systems, which are based on those adopted nationally under the National Environment Protection (Movement of Controlled Waste between States and Territories) Measure (Controlled Waste NEPM), referred to in this report as ‘NEPM codes’.
A NEPM code to Basel Y-code conversion list is provided in Appendix A, while a Basel Y-code to NEPM code conversion is shown at Appendix B.
The Australian Government Department of the Environment commissioned Ascend Waste and Environment to prepare a collation of Australia-relevant knowledge on the health and environmental impacts of hazardous waste (actual and potential). This report presents that collation in the form of a catalogue of 49 individual hazardous waste impact profiles, designed to strengthen the knowledge of hazards, impacts, potential risks and the management of hazardous waste specifically relevant to Australia.
Impact profiles cover Y codes 1-45, and exclude Y46 (waste collected from households), Y47 (residues from the incineration of household waste) and Y14 (waste chemical substances arising from research and development or teaching activities, including those which are not identified and/or are new and whose effects on human health and/or the environment are not known). Of the additional eight wastes Australia reports to Basel (the so called ‘Y+8’), three of these (waste containers, contaminated soils and contaminated sludges) have also been excluded because they, like Y14, are not hazard-specific so could have a range of impacts, and would be covered by other wastes in the list.
An important feature of each profile is a relative measure of hazard, called hazard score, described by a colour-coded bar graphic and numeric score from 0 to 6. This provides a comparative sense of the severity of hazard posed by each waste. The method used in compiling hazard scores is described in Appendix C.
As an adjunct to the profiles catalogue, section 2 presents a brief report discussing those wastes considered to pose significant risks in the Australian context, through either their inherent hazard, the management challenges they pose or the sheer volume in which they are produced in each year.
2 Summary report: Australia’s key hazardous waste impacts and risks
Of the 49 waste groups listed in the attached profiles, it is difficult to determine which ones have the most potential for impact or present the most significant risks in an Australian context. Overall tonnage contribution is a raw indicator that does not take account of the degree of hazard posed by the waste, while inherent hazard provides no indication of the potential for exposure, either to humans or the environment, and therefore risk to both. It seems logical that a combination of both hazard and tonnage (a proxy for exposure) is relevant to identifying key risk wastes, but a metric to do so is not clear. Typically risk is a measure of hazard and exposure, but exposure is variable depending on different circumstances that exposure to the waste could occur within.
Figure 1 provides an infographic of wastes, in this case as NEPM codes (because some Y codes cover multiple NEPM codes with different tonnage arisings and hazards). Each waste’s hazard score is displayed alongside the 2013 tonnage. This allows quick identification of the most significant volume contributors on the left and the most significant hazard contributors on the right.
In hazard score terms, the top 10-12 wastes exhibit hazard characteristics of biohazard (clinical and related waste), chromium-based toxicity/ eco-toxicity (wood preserving chemicals and hexavalent chromium compounds), explosivity, or persistent (mainly chronic) debilitative impacts widely in the environment as well as to human health (dioxins and furans, pesticides, PCBs and other halogenated organic compounds). Looked at in pure volume terms, the top 10-12 wastes are completely different, and dominated by biosolids and contaminated soils (the latter is not listed in Figure 1, since no hazard score was possible).
Putting biosolids and soils to one side, the remaining top ten wastes (by tonnage of arisings in 2013) were:
1. Asbestos (790kt)
2. Grease trap waste (557kt)
3. Tyres (435kt)
4. Oily waters (416kt)
5. Alkali wastes (351kt)
6. Animal effluent and residues (342kt)
7. Waste oils (240kt)
8. Zinc compounds (211kt)
9. Lead compounds (133kt)
10. Non-toxic salts (91kt).
All wastes in this report are inherently hazardous, at least at some level. Tonnage is important in prioritising the potential for impact because, in a simplistic sense, as quantity increases the potential for exposure to hazards (across the population), and therefore risk also increases. However, from the above list there are a number of wastes that probably don’t deserve ‘high priority’ status from a risk of impact perspective: very large tonnage/ low hazard wastes like animal effluent (K100), grease trap (K110) and tyres (T140); while D230 is unique in that its large volumes comes from a very small number of very specific sources, which limits the potential for exposure.