CRITERIA FOR IDENTIFYING TOXIC WASTE

05/01/2001

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The Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) recently revised its Criteria for Identifying Hazardous Industrial Wastes. According to the criteria, hazardous industrial wastes are identi-fied in the following ways: (1) listed hazardous wastes (including hazardous process wastes, and composite metallic wastes, which are separately classified); (2) wastes with defined hazardous properties (including wastes that are toxic, toxic leachate producing, corrosive, flammable, reac-tive, or infective; asbestos and asbestos product wastes; PCB wastes; and single non-ferrous-metal wastes); (3) other substances announced by the EPA. However, the criteria did not include detailed conditions and proce-dures for reclassifying wastes originally defined as hazardous industrial wastes as general indus-trial wastes.
The amendments introduce explicit provisions covering such reclassification. The following types of hazardous industrial wastes may now be reclassified as general industrial wastes:

Those listed by the regulatory authority as approved for such reclassification;

Wastes that are rendered non-hazardous by disposal and treatment;

Containers used for hazardous wastes, if the enterprise is equipped for their cleaning and is able to deal with wastewater and other liquid wastes produced by such cleaning;

Liquid wastes other than hazardous process wastes, toxic, toxic leachate producing, cor-rosive or reactive wastes, PCBs or other sub-stances designated by the EPA, if incinerated or heat treated; and

Infectious wastes that can be classed as gen-eral industrial wastes after being disinfected.