Hazardous waste Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Hazardous waste - Assignment Example The United States Environmental Protection Agency is the governmental organization acting with a purpose to ensure: that all Americans are protected from significant risks to their health and environment where they work, live, or learn and that the federal laws protecting the environment and human health are effectively and fairly enforced (EPA, n.d.). The purpose of this research is to provide an overview of US-EPA’s definition of the hazardous waste, the types of hazardous wastes and solid waste. As well the paper is aiming to analyze critically whether there are any discrepancies in the regulations and what effects on human health and environment have hazardous wastes. US Environmental Protection Agency defines hazardous waste as a waste that is dangerous or potentially harmful to human health or the environment (EPA, n.d., n.p.). To this category of wastes can be included sludges, liquids, gases, and solids. There are two ways of identifying solid wastes as hazardous based on the EPA’s regulations. The first way is to check whether it is included on a EPA’s list of wastes, and the second way is to identify whether the waste exhibits certain hazardous characteristics (EPA, n.d.). EPA has formed a list of hazardous wastes which is comprised of four different classifications: the F-list, K-list, P-list, and U-list. The F-list of hazardous waste includes the wastes identified as â€Å"non-specific source wastes† – wastes from common industrial and manufacturing activities. These hazardous wastes can be produced in different sectors of industry or manufacturing processes and that is why their sources are not specified under the F-list category (EPA 2008, 5). On the contrary to the F-list, the K-list of hazardous waste include particular solid wastes coming from specific industries (EPA 2008). The P-list as well as the U-list includes the wastes from commercial chemical products. Commercial chemical products have the generic