Thursday, November 19, 2015

Information About Hazardous Waste Disposal

By Mattie Knight


Modern-day households contain several products some of which are very dangerous. Products are made dangerous by the ingredients they are made out of or the materials that make them. Some good examples of household products that have been categorized as hazardous include ammunition, refrigerants, paints, solvents, aerosols, electronics, caustics, certain batteries, pesticides, and automotive wastes among others.

The aforementioned products are safe when they are used safely and when they are still in good condition for use. However, when misused or their life-cycle expires, they become a threat to human and animal health as well as to the well-being of the environments. As such, they need to be disposed in the right way to avoid danger. Each waste material has a preferred method of disposal. This article will give some main hazardous waste disposal methods in use today.

When proper disposal is done, the wastes offer minimum or no risk at all to people, animals and the environment. On the contrary, improper or poor disposal can be detrimental. For instance, if the materials get their way into underground water sources or into gutters, they may poison water, making it unsafe for human consumption. They also contaminate soil and render it unsuitable for agriculture.

Today waste materials are disposed through many different methods. Recycling, incineration, use of cement, pyrolysis, and landfills are among the methods in common use. Concerned parties encourage people to use recycling because besides being economical, it is eco-friendly. Recycling is the process of finding other applications for products after they fail or cannot perform the original function for which they were defined. The main downside in this method is that it cannot be used in all situations or products.

Another widely employed technique of getting rid of wastes is incineration. Very high temperatures are used to destroy the materials inside a chamber. The chamber used is called an incinerator or an incineration chamber. Ash is the usual end result. Ash can be disposed easily without being harmful to the environment or people.

Emission of harmful gasses from incineration chambers into the environment has been cause for concern. To counter that, modern incinerators never emit any materials into the environment. In fact, their efficiency is so high that they are used for generation of power from the combustion process. A version of incineration is pyrolysis, which destroys materials under high temperatures, but does not involve combustion. Combustion is avoided by performing the process in an inert environment.

Hazardous materials have traditionally been disposed in landfills before better methods emerged and that changed. New methods have been adopted because of the seepage of harmful materials into underground water, which occurs in landfills. This kind of pollution is irreversible. However, some places still use this method although to a low level.

Cement can also be used to treat and dispose harmful material. Cement works by solidifying and stabilizing the material for ease of disposal. The material to be disposed is treated with cement, which modifies its characteristics and decreases the level of toxicity and ability for contaminants to be transmitted. Application is limited though.




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