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Rapid Estimation of Release Inventories and Evaluation: A Metal Coating Industry Case Study
Citation:
Hernandez-Betancur, J., Gerardo J. Ruiz-Mercado, H. Hernandez, AND L. Ocampo-Carmona. Rapid Estimation of Release Inventories and Evaluation: A Metal Coating Industry Case Study. AIChE Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, November 10 - 15, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
This product describes is a presentation on estimating releases of chemicals and their environmental impact evaluation. The metal coating Industry data obtained from EPA databases will be employed as a case study demonstration. Chemical releases may present unanticipated health risks that EPA and its Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics must evaluate, as described in the Toxic Substances Control Act as amended by the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The overall evaluation may involve risk assessment, including evaluations of chemical releases, exposures, and hazards. Data reconciliation and learning-from-data framework will be useful to support TSCA risk evaluation by means of rapid estimation of industrial chemical releases and management scenarios.
Description:
Industrial facilities may release many chemical substances during the production of value-added products. These chemical releases may cause damage to a receptor, either occupational and/or non-occupational population, and the environment. Therefore, to determine whether a chemical poses a considerable risk to human health and the environment, several tasks must be completed. These include determining the releases to the environment from conditions of use. This work aims to develop a process-oriented, decision-making, and learning-from-data framework which integrates: (a) estimation of chemical releases from an industrial facility taking into consideration the type of processes, the condition of use, and the physical-chemical properties of a substance; (b) environmental sustainability indicators based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA)’s GREENSCOPE; (c) a decision-making procedure based on fuzzy techniques to include stakeholders’ opinions; and (d) an aggregation method to incorporate the existing trade-off between the USEPA’s GREENSCOPE environmental indicators. A case of study for the U.S. metal coating industry is employed for applying the proposed framework as a tool for supporting environmental decision-making efforts and chemical release minimization. In addition, this framework may be suitable for chemical risk evaluation and environmental sustainability decision-making for industrial systems.