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A Process System Framework for End-of-Life Chemical Release Modeling and Worker Exposure
Citation:
Hernandez-Betancur, J. AND G. Ruiz-Mercado. A Process System Framework for End-of-Life Chemical Release Modeling and Worker Exposure. Organic Waste Management Workshop, Madison, WI, May 07 - 10, 2019.
Impact/Purpose:
This presentation describes on estimating releases of chemicals when these are transferred to an off-site facility for their recycling, recovery, and/or reuse. The chemical end-of-life management at off-site facilities 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. The overall evaluation may involve risk assessment, including evaluations of chemical releases, exposures, and hazards. The data reconciliation and learning-from-data framework will be useful to support TSCA risk evaluation by means of rapid estimation of industrial chemical releases during end-of-life management scenarios, which are not currently analyzed.
Description:
As part of the effort to meet the TSCA requirements, EPA published in 2016 an initial list of the first 10 chemicals substances to address risk evaluation. However, in the conceptual models developed for the above substances, some pathways not further analyzed are related to releases of chemicals when these are transferred to an off-site facility for their recycling, recovery, and/or reuse, as well as waste treatments regulated by any EPA statute different to TSCA. Therefore, for dealing with the above, and considering that the current TSCA Chemical Substance Inventory lists around 85,000 chemicals, this presentation describes an end-of-life data-reconciliation and learning-from-data framework based on existing EPA databases for predicting the indirect releases of chemical wastes generated under industrial conditions of use. Here, indirect releases represent environmental releases that occur following the mentioned end-of-life management at off-site facilities.