PARENT SESSION
52 - Risk Assessment and Management
8:00 AM to 6:30 PM, Tuesday, 14 May 2002
Exhibition Area

(52-19) Priority Chemicals for Monitoring and Managing in Waste Streams.

Inoue, Yuzo^*,1, Yang, Jin-Woo¹, Ishigaki, Tomonori¹, Ohkochi, Yumiko¹, Mohri, Shino¹, Inanc, Bulennt¹, Nagata, Yuko², Honda, Kazuhide², Yamada, Masato¹, ¹ Research Center for Material cycles and Waste Management, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan² 2-3, Kandanishiki-cho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan

ABSTRACT- About 100,000 chemicals are commercially traded every year in the world, and finally they concentrated and accumulated in waste management areas. In order to manage hazardous chemicals concerning with waste management area adequately, amounts of production and accumulation should be evaluated with accounting the material and substance flow. Since several hazardous chemicals are awaiting to be managed, it is necessary to select the priority chemicals of which release should be controlled and of which fate in natural environment, such as the biotic/abiotic conversions or the pathway of exposure to human body, should be elucidated. In this study Chemical Prioritization developed by U.S.-EPA was applied to select the priority chemicals that should be monitored and managed in waste management area. It comprised scoring and ranking of candidates of chemicals by following four main criteria, PBT (persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity) characteristics, environmental presence, quantity/prevalence and government concern. Since adequate database including enough information for selecting chemicals has not been available at the current situation in Japan, 178 chemicals that were listed in Japanese PRTR (Pollutant Release and Transfer Register) Pilot Project were used as candidates. Each criterion was given 25pts as a full mark, and scores of candidate chemicals were summed and ordered. As a result Bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalates (DEHP) showed the maximum score, 85.4pts, suggesting the highest priority for management. DEHP was followed by lead and relatives (70.8pts), Benzene (68.8pts) Cadmium and relatives (68.1pts), Tetrachloroethylene (PCE: 64.6pts) and so on. The difference of the results between this study and RCRA PBT list that ranked Pb as 1st, Cd as 2nd, DEHP as 7th and PCE as 31st would be ascribed to the differences of the weighing, lack of information, score estimation and so on.

Key words: hazardous chemicals, Prioritization, PBT, SFA