PERHAPS sparked by the devastating natural disasters and terrorist attacks the nation has experienced in the recent past, a renewed emphasis has been placed on ensuring that decontamination procedures are established and that they are a documented component of emergency response plans.
IN the world of hazardous materials, the Internet is the emerging tool of choice for providing material safety data sheets to employees and product purchasers downstream in commerce. Incorporated with an MSDS database, the Internet can be a cost-effective and efficient tool for Hazard Communication compliance and enhanced employee safety.
DID you know that OSHA considers a brick a hazardous material if is cut or sawed during construction? And that a highway patrol officer enforcing Department of Transportation regulations considers over-the-counter primer a flammable liquid? Hazardous materials aren't always visible to the untrained eye, yet they are present at just about every construction site in the United States.
Editor's note: The U.S. chemical industry deserves praise for taking care of its own security by spending millions of dollars to harden plants' perimeters, says Jerry Blackman, Honeywell's Global Director of Industrial Security Solutions. Honeywell Security's products for industrial customers (call 602-313-4712 for information) include video recorders, cameras, perimeter control and lobby access systems, intrusion sensors, control panels, and wireless fire and burglary alarm systems.
ON January 6, 2005, a 42-car train traveling at approximately 40 mph through Graniteville, S.C., crashed into a parked locomotive. A number of the cars contained hazardous chemicals: resins, kaolin, and sodium hydroxide. Three cars were 90-ton tankers, each carrying full loads of chlorine.
HEXAVALENT chromium (CrVI) compounds are used in a variety of industries where potential exposures may occur. Metal plating, the use of pigments containing CrVI, and chemical synthesis where CrVI is used as a catalyst or as an ingredients can result in worker exposure. Welding on CrVI-painted surfaces can also result in the generation of CrVI.
With the media's focus on highway accidents involving bulk containers, resulting fatalities, and environmental pollution, we tend to forget the vast majority of hazardous materials are shipped in non-bulk containers such as paint cans, bottles, metal drums, pressurized cylinders, and cardboard boxes. Inside are flammable, corrosive, and poisonous liquids; gases; infectious substances; radioactive materials; and explosives, separated only by the containment method, the package.
YOU are sleeping soundly in your own bed, for a change, after spending the better part of two weeks at the site of a chemical warehouse fire, where you assessed exposure--or the lack thereof, as it turned out--of neighboring buildings and the employees who inhabit them.
IN September 2001, the AZF Chemical plant in Toulouse, France, was destroyed by a massive explosion, killing 30 people in the country's worst-ever industrial accident. It was determined the accident was caused by negligent storage of incompatible materials.
ON the heels of yet another federal investigation attributing chemical-related deaths and injuries to defective hazard communications systems in the workplace, few would question that a public health crisis is afoot. More than 30 million American workers are exposed each day to hazardous chemicals at the workplace, with upwards of a half-million chemicals being stored and used in today's hospitals, manufacturing plants, and industrial facilities.
FIRE, smoke, explosion, medical trauma, and injury present obvious threats to health and safety. But when chemical or biological toxins are floating invisibly as "aerosols" in the air we breathe, the presence and nature of the hazard are much harder to determine and the consequences potentially far reaching.
DURING the past decade, the methamphetamine (meth) situation in the United States has changed dramatically. What was known primarily as a West Coast problem has quickly spread throughout the country, posing a serious occupational hazard for probation and parole officers, cleanup workers, and others.
THE other night, I was watching the blockbuster movie "Titanic." Seeing that iceberg break up the world's most un-sinkable ship, it occurred to me that it's life's dangers that you can't see that will get you in trouble.
HOW are you managing the hazardous materials you use, store, and produce in your facility? Unless you have a multimillion-dollar budget and work in an organization with a cultural commitment to safety and risk management, you are probably managing ever-more-complex rules and requirements with smaller budgets, fewer resources, and less organizational commitment than the year before.
USERS of chlorine now regulated by the newly created 2003 International Fire Code and the 2003 Edition of the Uniform Fire Code are pleased to find they are no longer required to have a scrubber when storing or using 150-lb cylinders or one-ton containers of liquefied chlorine gas.
FLAMMABLE and combustible liquids are present in nearly every workplace. Gasoline, diesel fuel, and many common products such as solvents, thinners, cleaners, adhesives, paints, and polishes may be flammable or combustible.
CHALLENGE: How do you effectively capture weld dust when the work constantly moves and varies in size from small (10 liter) to large (30,000+ liter) stainless processing vessels?
MEETING the challenges of today's packaging regulations can be difficult and time consuming for shippers.
WORKERS throughout a wide range of chemical processing industries are becoming more conscious than ever before of discharges that, although they fall within acceptable safety limits, cause annoyance and potential discomfort.
PCE--the acronym used in the hazardous materials industry for tetrachloroethene--is a common dry-cleaning solvent that does wonders for getting clothes clean.