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12 - Hazardous waste

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Marquita K. Hill
Affiliation:
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
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Summary

“I've worked with indigenous people on all continents but Antarctica, and one thing they all agree on is the Earth is sacred. We're the only ones who look at it as a commodity.”

Dr. Paul Cox, ethnobiologist

A hazardous waste is one that is either ignitable, corrosive, reactive, toxic, or more than one of these. As with municipal solid waste, hazardous waste is a small percentage of the more than 12 billion tons (10.9 billion tonnes) of total waste that the United States generates each year. But hazardous waste has been abandoned at many thousands of sites in the United States, and around the world. At these sites, hazardous substances may contaminate soil, seep into groundwater, or run off into nearby water, and evaporate into the air. Section I of this chapter examines hazardous waste (HW) characteristics, locales of HW sites, and who generates HW. Section II returns to the Waste Management Hierarchy (WMH) as applied to hazardous waste. Section III deals with how human exposure occurs and how the risks of HW sites are evaluated. Section IV examines how to reduce the risk of HW sites, and examines cleanup methods including bioremediation. Section V moves on to HW dumping in impoverished nations and the international accord negotiated to combat this practice. One waste still moving into these countries is a stream of electronic discards. We look at how we can reduce that flow.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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References

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  • Hazardous waste
  • Marquita K. Hill, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
  • Book: Understanding Environmental Pollution
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840654.013
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  • Hazardous waste
  • Marquita K. Hill, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
  • Book: Understanding Environmental Pollution
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840654.013
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Hazardous waste
  • Marquita K. Hill, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
  • Book: Understanding Environmental Pollution
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840654.013
Available formats
×