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The Gaps in the Federal Regulation of Hazardous Waste
Managing the Nation's Hazardous Waste - EPA Must Fill in the Gaps
Lack of Identification
Under the law, hazardous waste must be managed with greater care than non-hazardous industrial wastes and household trash. Therefore, it is critically important to ensure that hazardous wastes are properly identified and kept out of municipal solid waste landfills and incinerators.
The question of what chemical wastes should be considered "hazardous" has not yet been fully answered. The RCRA law itself required EPA to complete a study to determine whether the current tests for hazardous wastes should be expanded to fully protect public health and the environment.
The Hazardous Waste Characteristics Scoping Study released in November 1996 identified major gaps in hazardous waste protection.
This Scoping Study shows clearly that the current RCRA program needs to cover new hazardous wastes that are currently unregulated. Most of the EPA's methods for determining which wastes are hazardous were adopted in the early 1980's, and both science and industry have advanced since then. As we approach the millenium, it is time for EPA to implement the changes recommended by the Scoping Study.
Summary of Major Findings of the Scoping Study Report
 The Scoping Study found that the tests and criteria used to determine if waste are ignitable, corrosive, reactive or toxic do not consider very important factors leading to under-inclusive results.
Ignitability
The Study found that the present criteria are under-inclusive because the EPA regulations exclude Department Of Transportation (DOT) [Combustible Liquids (liquids with flash point above 140 but below 200 degrees) and Aqueous Flammable Liquids (alcohol solutions of concentrations less than 24 percent).] The regulations also reference outdated DOT Regulations and provide no test method for non-liquids (Page 3-9)
Corrosivity
The Study notes gaps exist because there is no test for solids. Nor does any test address corrosion of non-steel materials. There are also questions noted in the report concerning the inherent limitations of the pH test for corrosivity.
Reactivity
The study finds gaps due to the lack of specificity in the narrative definition of reactivity as well as its references to outdated DOT regulations.
Toxicity
Most importantly, the Scoping Study concluded that the toxicity characteristic, which currently applies to only 43 chemical compounds, fails to address hundreds of toxic chemicals that can cause a waste to be hazardous.
EPA's regulations require use of the Toxic Characteristic Leaching Procedure (TCLP) to identify wastes that are regulated for toxicity. Not all toxic chemicals that could be identified in a TCLP test are considered, however. In fact, of the hundreds of toxic chemicals that are used by industry, only 43 are subject to the TCLP test. If those 43 specific chemicals are not found, but other dangerous toxic chemicals are actually in the waste, the waste is not regulated under RCRA and can be sent to municipal dumps and municipal incinerators.
The Scoping Study also found that the TCLP underestimates leaching from high alkaline wastes, oily wastes, and some paint wastes. The test fails to accurately mimic conditions commonly found in non-hazardous industrial waste landfills and does not accurately predict long-term mobility of organic contaminants in some treated wastes.
Another major concern is that the toxicity characteristic only addresses the health risks from drinking water contamination. Chemicals that are toxic through inhalation or would contaminate surface waters such as persistent and bioaccumulative toxics are not captured by the TCLP. The Study notes that groundwater-modeling techniques used to set the TC levels have changed significantly since the TCLP was promulgated and that many states use more accurate alternative tests.
The significant defects in the regulations to properly determine if wastes are ignitable, corrosive, reactive or toxic has lead to wastes that are actually hazardous being managed as non-hazardous.
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