Pollution Prevention - Urban Watersheds: Geology, Contamination, and Sustainable Development - page 441

• Production efficiencies
• Product packaging
• Shipping (rail vs. truck)
Where possible, a mass balance should be calculated to ensure the accuracy of the data.
Once the data have been collected and evaluated, steps 2 through 4 should be completed
before firmly establishing goals and objectives for any pollution prevention program.
13.3.2 Step 2: Inventory of Hazardous Substances
The next step performed to develop a pollution prevention plan at any location—whether
a manufacturing facility or a household—is to inventory and assess hazardous substance
use. Chapter 7 covered many common contaminants present in urban areas, including
households. As they are often very close to industrial sites, households can assist with
any inventory since the average American household stores 3-10 gal of hazardous materi-
als (Smolinske and Kaufman 2007). To inventory chemicals, CAS Registration Numbers
should be used since many products display either trade names or synonyms. If available,
material safety data sheets (MSDS) often provide valuable information.
Inspecting the label on chemical containers is required, especially when the container
is a mixture of chemical products. In these cases, the name of the product is often a trade
name and is not very helpful in identifying the specific chemicals contained, so inspection
of the label is the only effective method. An example of a label on a chemical product is
shown in Figure 13.1.
Chemicals should be inventoried by chemical group, such as VOCs, PAHs, SVOCs, PCBs,
metals, acid, bases, and whether they are present in gas, liquid, or solid form. Transformers
containing PCBs should also have appropriate labels as shown in Figure 13.2. After the
FIGURE 13.1
Chemical labels. (Photo by Daniel T. Rogers.)
FIGURE 13.2
Chemical labels. (Photo by Daniel T. Rogers.)