Hazardous Materials



Hazardous Materials

Hazardous Materials

Hazardous or dangerous materials are substances that could harm human health or the environment if not handled the right way. Hazardous materials are chemical substances, which if released or misused can pose a threat to the environment or health. These chemicals are used in industry, agriculture, medicine, research, and consumer goods. Many products containing hazardous chemicals are used and stored in homes routinely (NESEC, 2012). These products are also shipped daily on the nation's highways, railroads, waterways, and pipelines.

The degree of impact on the human body of poisonous substances is divided into 4 hazard class:

Extremely dangerous,

High-risk,

Moderately hazardous,

Low hazard.

According to its damaging properties of poisonous substances are mixed. As their primary classification attribute is most commonly used feature of the pre-emptive syndrome emerging in acute human intoxication (Chaudhary & Rachana, 2006). On this basis, the nature of the impact on the human bodies, all the poisonous substances are divided into the following groups:

Substances with predominantly choking (chlorine, phosgene, etc.);

Chemicals that are suffocating (nitric acid and nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen fluoride, etc.);

Chemicals that are suffocating and neurotropic activity (ammonia, etc.);

Metabolic poisons (ethylene oxide, etc.);

Disrupting substances metabolism (dioxins, etc.).

Hazardous Materials Incident

A hazardous materials incident is a situation in which a hazardous material escapes or may escape the surrounding environment. Hundreds of thousands of chemicals are produced, stored, transported and used annually. Due to the hazardous nature of many of these measures have been established to safeguard these and prevent causing damage (SEMA, 2012). If these measures are ignored accidentally or on purpose, the material is no longer under effective control and creates a situation that can have dangerous effects. The hazardous materials incidents vary considerably including chemicals and the amounts involved, the types of hazard, the response effort required, the necessary number of those responding, etc. These may require immediate control measures (emergency) or long-term activities (remedial action) to restore the affected area to normal conditions. Emergencies generally require prompt action to prevent or reduce the effects of the materials involved and response efforts last from a few hours and some days, the information available varies from none to a lot and usually little time available, usually requires prompt action to bring the incident under control (FEMA, 2012).

Of technogenic emergencies accidents from chemically hazardous objects occupy one of the most important places. Industrial use of chemicals in industry in the second half of the twentieth century has led to increase in man-made hazards associated with chemical accidents, which may be accompanied by atmospheric emissions abnormally chemically hazardous substances (poisonous substances), extensive material damage and great loss of life. According to statistics, in recent years in Russia each year is 80-100 accidents chemically hazardous objects with emission of poisonous substances into the environment (Hawley, 2008).

Types of Hazardous Materials

There are many different types of hazardous materials, such as:

Chemicals such as some that are used for cleaning

Drugs such as chemotherapy to treat cancer

Radioactive material used for x-rays ...