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Ten Sources of Hazardous Waste You May Not Have Thought Of

Any kind of waste product that is dangerous to the environment or to people is classified as hazardous waste. Anything that can catch fire, that can corrode and that can react in a dangerous way is a hazardous material. In America, we create several hundred million tons of these dangerous waste products in just one year.

There are many different places that hazardous waste can come from. The following are ten of the most common:

1. Companies that make metal products - Anytime metal is being created in a factory setting, there is also the creation of hazardous waste. Common hazardous waste products created in these environments include solvents, pickling solutions, plating waste, dangerous chemicals, paint waste and toxic water sludge.
2. Hospitals and and doctor’s Offices - Medical facilities are the largest creators of hazardous biological waste and waste contaminated with infectious diseases. Things like needles used for shots, organs that have been removed and bandages covered in bodily fluids are the most common examples but not the only hazardous waste created in these facilities. Treating patients with radiological materials or diagnosing them with the same materials create radioactive waste. Medication that is simply thrown in the trash instead of being disposed of correctly is also a form of hazardous waste.
3. Fuel stations - Since leaded gas is no longer used, gas stations are not producing as much hazardous waste as they previously did. The way fuel is stored in tanks below the ground that can leak and allow fuel into the earth is one area where hazardous waste can come into play. Newer gas stations have to follow strict rules to avoid these problems but older gas stations might still be creating hazardous waste.
4. Dry cleaners - The chemicals used in the dry cleaning process can be very hazardous to people and the environment. Everything these chemicals touch like materials used in cleaning and equipment filters can be classified as hazardous waste.
5. Photo developing centers - The chemicals used to develop photographs are hazardous in some cases. The silver in these chemicals can damage plants and animals living in the water. Silver can also affect how water treatment plants work by damaging the biological elements used in the plants. The chemicals can corrode metals in some cases.
6. Farming - While organic farming is mostly done with no hazardous chemicals, most farms rely on chemicals to get the most growth out of their plants. Some of the chemicals prevent damage to the crops from diseases and insects. The waste water created during the fertilization process are also hazardous to the environment.
7. Construction - Many older buildings were painted with lead paint, which is a hazardous material. The lead is exposed to air and enters the environment during demolition in these homes. Other hazardous items in older buildings, especially commercial buildings, can include asbestos and light fixtures with mercury.
8. Auto repair facilities - When car repairs are being done, there are is hazardous waste. These hazardous materials can include oil, gasoline, antifreeze and paint.
9. Research facilities - Any laboratory, whether it is a professional laboratory or a high school chemistry laboratory, use chemicals that can be hazardous. Things used to disinfect the lab, solvents and chemicals used for experimentation are all things that can be hazardous.
10. Your own home - While it may sound absurd, your house probably has its own share of hazardous waste. Often the things we use to clean our home can be a fire risk, can cause corrosion or can be reactive. The liquids and other materials used in car maintenance can be hazardous waste a well because they may have things like lead or mercury in them. This is just a small list of the possible hazardous waste items in your home.

Hazardous waste comes from many sources, these are just a few. Really, you can’t get away from hazardous waste. The best thing we can all do is to try to use less of the hazardous materials and make sure we get rid of any hazardous waste we have in the proper way to protect humans and the environment.

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Landfills Can Harm Your Health

Each person in the America creates almost 5 pounds of trash per day! That adds up to one ton of trash for every person per year. Most of the trash we generate gets dumped in a local landfill.

Landfills are monitored for safety by the government. They can not be built on a piece of land that is unstable or is near a fault line. They have to be far enough away from any water supply so there is no danger of the water being polluted. They also have to be far enough from homes to not be an eyesore or nose sore. Despite all these rules, landfills are still dangerous to us and the environment.

Landfill Gas and Your Health

Generally, any waste that might create gas pollution is not allowed to be dumped in a landfill. However, some of this dangerous waste gets in due to negligence and this can be very bad for the health of people who live and work near the landfill. Landfills produce odorous pollution even if no gas producing waste gets in.

The large amount of paper goods and food people throw away that end up in a landfill is hazardous. These things will break down as time goes on but in the process they can create a dangerous gas called methane. This gas is more hazardous than even carbon dioxide. The problem with having methane gas at the landfills is it can easily catch fire, react with other gases and suck the oxygen out of the air.

Chemicals Leaking and Landfills

There are several millions of pounds of hazardous chemicals dumped into landfills around the country each year. Currently, landfills must store the chemicals in leak proof containers but some landfills have these chemicals stored improperly before this regulation went into effect. Even the properly stored chemicals may leak after a certain period of time.

Some of the chemicals commonly located in landfills are vinyl chloride and tolulene, known to be linked to cancer. The problem is that these chemicals interact with other landfill chemicals and create leachate. Leachate is a strong chemical mixture that often finds its way into the ground and possibly into water supplies and poses a danger to food supplies, as well as humans and pets. A little bit of this dangerous mixture of chemicals can do a lot of damage.

What Should We Do?

When landfills were first developed, not enough thought was given to the potential for the landfills to hurt the health of both humans and animals nearby. Most of the trash we as a country produce goes into landfills. There are other choices.

If people were willing to recycle, they would put a lot less trash into the landfills. The majority of our trash is indeed recyclable and a lot of it is biodegradable. We could lower the amount of trash put in landfills by around 70% if people recycled and composted biodegradable trash. If trash was dealt with in this manner, the toxins in the trash would not get into the landfill and into the environment.

Some success has been had with community based composting but it is not easy to get people to cooperate. People are generally happy to recycle as long as they have the option but as of now, it is a choice, not the law. Time will tell when the rest of the country will start to compost and recycle, but meanwhile we all need to take responsibility and do what we can to handle our trash responsibly.

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Cell Phones are Hazardous to the Environment

Cell phones are a relatively new invention but almost everyone has one. Companies are constantly coming out with new cell phone technology and people feel lost without their cell phones. The rapid growth of technology and popularity of the cell phone has some dangerous consequences, however.

Making Cell Phones is Hazardous

As soon as a factory starts to make a cell phone, the environment is negatively affected. A lot of our natural resources go into the production of cell phones. Valuable elements like gold, copper, palladium and silicon are all used in cell phone production. These elements have to be drilled or otherwise extracted from the ground, which uses a lot of energy and water and creates a lot of hazardous waste.

Making a phone or two is not too much of a hazard but millions of cell phones are produced every single year. A lot of people have a phone for personal use and a work phone. People usually only use their cell phone for a few years before replacing it with a more modern cell phone model. The more phones we use the more dangerous waste is produced and released into the environment and the more resources we use.

Disposing of Cell Phones

Cell phones are hazardous to the environment because we generally just throw our old phones away when we get new ones. The problem with all the cell phones ending up in the trash is that there are toxic metals like lead and mercury in the phones that can harm our environment.

The large number of cell phones in our landfills is a serious environmental problem. No matter how well taken care of the landfill is, the toxic metals in the cell phone make their way into the environment at some point. That can lead to toxins in our water and soil that can get into our food supply.

If everyone would recycle their old cell phones, that would greatly reduce the harm to the environment. Unfortunately, most people do not recycle their cell phones and may not even know that it is an option. There are no laws requiring cell phones to be recycled. It can actually cost you to recycle your cell phone so that causes a lot of cell phone owners to be discouraged and simply throw their phones in the trash.

Dangers of Cell Towers

The more cell phones we use the more cell phone towers we need so we have a signal wherever we go. Cell phone towers use up valuable land that could be put to a better, more environmentally-friendly use. Cell phone towers also require the use of natural resources to build. There can be other dangers to the environment as well.

Cell phone towers work by sending out a frequency that we cannot hear. It is unknown what the long term effects of this frequency are. Birds can become disorientated and fly right into cell phone towers in some cases and that may be from the frequencies. Some farmers report problems with their cows’ health if they are near a cell phone tower. There are no scientific studies to show exactly what effect these frequencies have on humans or animals, however. Cell phones make it possible for us to always be in contact with our friends and family. However, the popularity of cell phones has negatively affected the environment.

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