Lessons learned from case studies of hazardous waste/chemical reactivity incidents

Abstract

The treatment of hazardous waste poses some unique chemical reactivity hazard management challenges. Hazardous waste in the United States is regulated by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, typically due to potential environmental and health hazards. However, hazardous waste can also have chemical reactivity hazards associated with storage, handling, or mixing with other materials. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been active in communicating chemical reactivity hazards to the regulated community and has identified numerous sources for additional information. The Center for Chemical Process Safety has also been very active in providing advisory materials and monographs on the safe management of chemical reactivity hazards. Other federal government agencies, such as the Chemical Safety Board and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, have also taken up the call for increased awareness of the hazards of unintentional chemical reactions. Despite these efforts, history of incidents indicates that reactive chemical hazards associated with hazardous waste still go overlooked. In this article, we review hazardous waste incidents through case studies and public sector reports through the lens of chemical reactivity hazard management. In each incident, inadvertent heating resulted in an unintended chemical reaction, and sufficient information existed or could have been obtained to identify the hazards. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 33: 395–398, 2014

Waste Solvents to Trash Haulers: Lessons Learned from Hazardous Waste Accidents

“…This incident involved the explosion of a tank car containing toluene diisocyanate (TDI) waste material that was used as supplementary fuel in a rotary kiln at cement plant operating as a hazardous waste treatment and disposal facility. The explosion occurred during the unloading process . As consequence, the tank containing TDI was propelled about 750 feet away, damaging other tank‐cars and storage tanks located nearby (Figure ).…”

“…Four critical factors and lessons learned were identified from this incident : Use of inappropriate tank car design that was unsuitable for this service, creating difficulties for unloading of TDI solid waste. Storing of TDI waste for several years in a warm climate Providing inadequate instructions and warnings for unloading the TDI waste. Commingling an unknown contaminant with the TDI waste: this last factor was the most serious error in this incident. …”

“…Recent studies have identified several trends in hazardous waste TSDF fires and explosions . Incidents can occur in any stage of the process from initial storage, waste repackaging, or transfer to the final treatment stage (i.e., incinerator, calciner, or kiln).…”

How to recognise a kick: A cognitive task analysis of drillers’ situation awareness during well operations

“…Roberts et al, 2015a;Sneddon et al, 2006;Smith, Kincannon, Lehnert, Wang & Larrañaga, 2013) as well as more broadly within the process industries (e.g. Antonovsky, Pollock & Straker, 2014;Broadribb, 2012;Cox, Carpenter & Ogle, 2014), there does not appear to be a standard tool for investigating these factors in drilling. The outcome of the ACTA could be used to support accident investigation as a method of understanding why operators missed kick indicators or took certain decisions, rather than blaming them for their actions (Dekker, 2015).…”

A New Approach for Liquid Scanners to Determine Flammable Liquid Concentration in Solutions

“…Fires involving self-incineration may accelerate depending on the nature of the first spilled liquid and its proximity to the surrounding material. Hazardous chemical reactivity events have been conducted and lessons learned from these cases as presented in [2]. In most cases, oxidisers have caused these fires to start or have contributed to the increasing coverage of the fires [3].…”