Christine Flowers and Raleigh Ross
Proper Automotive Waste Management
Resource Manual
By Christine Flowers and Raleigh Ross
Sponsored by the California Integrated Waste Management Board
Latest Revision 7/16/2002
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Christine Flowers and Raleigh Ross
Table of Contents
Introduction 5
Goals and Objectives 5
Goals 5
Objectives 5
Problems 7
Environmental Impact 7
Introduction 7
Understanding The Environment 7
The Impact 8
A Global Approach 10
Global Warming 12
Depletion of the Ozone Layer 12
Air Pollution 13
Water Pollution 13
Groundwater Depletion 14
Habitat Destruction and Species Extinction 14
Chemical Risks 14
Environmental Racism 15
Other Issues 15
Worker Safety 16
Keeping The Shop Safe 16
Inhalation Hazards 16
Dermal Absorption Hazards 16
Ingestion Hazards 17
Hazard Communication 17
Regulations 21
What are Hazardous Wastes? 21
Solutions 25
Waste Reduction 25
Pollution Prevention 25
Waste Minimization Methods 25
Recycling 26
Why Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle? 26
Substitute a less toxic substance 26
Use sound operating practices 27
Change the processes 27
Recycle wastes that cannot be reduced or reused 27
Waste Management 28
Why Should a Shop Properly Manage Its Wastes? 28
Practices/Efficiencies 28
Participation 28
Keeping the Shop Clean 29
Storage 30
Spill Control 30
Waste Water Contamination 30
Liquid Waste 32
In Vehicle Usage 32
Used Oil 32
Motor Oil 38
Automatic Transmission Fluid 45
Engine Coolant 47
Brake Fluid 51
Gasoline and Diesel Fuel 53
In Shop Usage 54
Cleaning Liquids 54
Acids 66
Alkaline Solutions 67
Waste Water 68
Solid Waste 72
Filters 72
Oil Filters 72
Fuel Filters 76
Air Filters 77
Containers 78
Oil Containers 78
Cans and Other Containers 79
Glass and Paper 80
Asbestos 81
Brake Shoes and Pads 85
Scrap Metal 86
Lead-Acid Batteries 88
Tires 90
Absorbents and Used Rags 93
Florescent Bulbs and High Intensity Discharge (HID) Lamps 96
Aerosol Cans 99
Gaseous Waste 104
Refrigerants 104
Volatile Organic Compounds/Solvents 109
Appendices 111
Appendix A 111
Toxicity Characteristic Hazardous Wastes 111
Appendix B 112
Listed Hazardous Wastes 112
Appendix C 113
Hazardous Waste Generator Requirements 113
Appendix D 115
Oil Related Rules, Guidelines And Legislation 115
Appendix E 118
A History of Automotive Oil 118
Appendix F 120
Automotive Lubricant Information 120
Appendix G 123
The Rebuttable Presumption 123
Appendix H 124
Re-Refined Oil – Closing the Loop 124
Appendix I 131
Comparisons of Antifreeze Recycling Methods 131
Appendix J 132
Brake Fluid Information 132
Appendix K 135
Information about n-Hexane Use 135
Appendix L 144
Scrap Tire Information 144
Appendix M 145
California Information 145
Appendix N 148
Handling CFC-12 148
Handling HFC-134a 149
Handling Other Refrigerants that Substitute for CFC-12 150
Retrofitting Vehicles to Alternative Refrigerants 152
Recovering Refrigerant During Motor Vehicle Air Condition Disposal 152
Appendix O 154
Environmental Regulations History Overview 154
Appendix P 161
Create an Oil Life Extension Program at Your Facility 161
Appendix Q 164
EPA Waste Codes - F List 164
Appendix R 169
NFPA Hazardous Rating – Fire Diamond 169
Glossary of Terms 172
Links 180
References 181
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Christine Flowers and Raleigh Ross
Introduction
Shasta College has developed this instructional kit including curriculum and resource materials on the subject of proper handling and management of automotive wastes. These materials were developed for use in community colleges, high school ROP and vocational schools. The materials include an instructor's resource manual, instructor presentation materials and student activities and lessons. The materials have been submitted for peer review, field tested in classroom settings, and revised based on the results of those reviews.
Community colleges and vocational schools in California provide technical training for automotive technicians who work in auto service stations and repair facilities. Entry level and experienced technicians are required to attend a variety of classes to receive and maintain professional certifications and licenses.
Currently there are limited materials available for instructors regarding environmental compliance and appropriate waste management in automotive shops. To address this need for information, California specific instructor and student materials has been developed for distribution to vocational instructors throughout California.
The main focus is on the waste stream generated by the automotive industry. These wastes fall into the categories of solid, liquid and gaseous. The material will follow a common format. First, each waste stream will be discussed according to the problems created by that waste. These problems will be divided into: environmental impact of the waste, worker safety surrounding the waste and regulations governing the waste. Secondly, the solutions to the waste problems will be presented. The solutions will be divided into waste reduction, recycling ideas, and waste management.
Goals and Objectives
Goals
The purpose of this curriculum is to:
· Present the current accepted practices in automotive waste management
· Provide a comprehensive curriculum package for use by automotive instructors
· Increase the awareness of students, shop managers and the general public about the best practices for pollution prevention in the shop environment
Objectives
After participating in this curriculum the automotive technician will:
· Demonstrate proper procedures to use, handle, and dispose of automotive waste
· Safely work with and understand the consequences of mishandling hazardous materials found in the automotive waste stream
· Define pollution prevention as it relates to the shop environment
· Implement inventory control methods as a means of source reduction
· Practice material substitution to reduce the use of hazardous materials
· Incorporate reduce, recycle and reuse as a means of increasing profitability and minimizing environmental impact
Problems
Environmental Impact
Introduction
Environment is all of the external factors affecting an organism. These factors may be other living organisms (biotic factors) or nonliving variables (abiotic factors), such as water, soil, climate, light, and oxygen. All interacting biotic and abiotic factors together make up an ecosystem.
Organisms and their environment constantly interact, and both are changed by this interaction. Additionally, environmental factors, singly or in combination, ultimately limit the size that any population may attain. This limit, a population's carrying capacity, is usually reached because needed resources are in short supply. Occasionally, carrying capacity may be dictated by the direct actions of other species, as when predators limit the number of their prey in a specific area.
Like all other living beings, humans have clearly changed their environment, but they have done so generally on a grander scale than have other species. Some of these changes—such as the destruction of the world's tropical rain forests to create grazing land for cattle or the drying up of almost three-quarters of the Aral Sea, once the world's fourth-largest freshwater lake, for irrigation purposes—have led to altered climate patterns, which in turn have changed the distribution of species of animals and plants.
Scientists are working to understand the long-term consequences that human actions have on ecosystems, while environmentalists—professionals in various fields, as well as concerned citizens in the United States and other countries—are struggling to lessen the impact of human activity on the natural world.
Understanding The Environment
The science of ecology is the study of the interactions that determine the abundance and distribution of organisms. In other words, ecology attempts to explain why individuals live where they do and why their populations are the sizes they are.
No population, human or otherwise, can grow indefinitely; eventually, some biotic or abiotic variable will begin to limit population growth. This basic ecological principle was first established in 1840 by German chemist Justus von Liebig and has been called the Law of the Minimum. From a human standpoint, this means that all of the world's physical resources are in finite supply.
Ecologists also have discovered that all species in an ecosystem interact with one another, either directly or indirectly. A classic ecological experiment illustrates this point very well. American ecologist Robert Paine, working in the rocky intertidal region of the Pacific coast, found stable invertebrate communities dominated by 15 species of animals, including starfish, mussels, limpets, barnacles, and chitons. When Paine removed all of the starfish from the area, the community collapsed, and eventually only 8 invertebrate species were common. Although it was not obvious in the undisturbed regions, the starfish were preying heavily on one of the mussel species and keeping its numbers down. With the starfish removed, the population of this mussel increased, and the mussel was able to out-compete many other species of invertebrates. Thus, the loss of one species, the starfish, indirectly led to the loss of an additional six species and a transformation of the community.
Typically, because the species that coexist in natural communities have evolved together for many generations, they have established a balance, and their populations remain relatively stable. Occasionally, when humans introduce a non-native species to an ecosystem, dramatic disruptions occur, often because the natural predators of the introduced species are not present. For example, early sailors routinely introduced goats to isolated oceanic islands, intending for the goats to roam freely and serve as a source of meat when the sailors later came ashore. Free from all natural predators, the goats thrived and, in the process, overgrazed many of the islands. With a change in plant composition, many of the native animal species were driven to extinction. A simple action, the introduction of goats to an island, yielded many changes in the island ecosystem, demonstrating that all members of a community are closely interconnected.
In the 1970s the British scientist James Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis, which has attracted many followers. According to this theory, named after the Greek goddess of the earth, the planet behaves like a single living organism. Lovelock postulated that the earth, like many organisms, could regulate its temperature, dispose of its wastes, and fight off disease. Although the Gaia hypothesis serves as a convenient metaphor for the interconnections among living beings, it does not have any particular scientific merit.
From a scientific viewpoint, the earth is not a single living organism, but it can be viewed as a single integrated system. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), using its expertise in planetary and space sciences, is collaborating with other U.S. governmental agencies in the use of artificial satellites to study global change. NASA's undertaking, begun in 1991, is called Mission to Planet Earth. This project is part of an international effort linking numerous satellites into a single Earth Observing System (EOS). EOS is designed to increase knowledge of the interactions taking place among the atmosphere, land, and oceans; to assess the impact of natural and human events on the planet; and to provide the data that permit sound environmental policy decisions to be made.
The Impact
Many of the global environmental issues that we face today and in the future are the same as those of the past century. Issues such as overpopulation, deforestation and desertification have been part of global history for centuries. More recent environmental issues include ozone depletion, global warming, acid rain, toxic airborne emissions, waste generation and disposal problems as well as depletion of non-renewable resources.
For the most part environmental issues are links in more than one way. Human populations, food, water and energy are linked. How a country chooses to address the issues and problems associated with a growing population’s increasing use of land and water for living, industrialization, and use of land, water and atmosphere for waste disposal will have a lasting impact on that country’s economy and human development.
Industrial development has always included accidents, including explosions, seepage of toxins into soil or water as well as atmospheric releases. In America one of the worst industrial explosions that occurred was on April 16, 1947 when an explosion of a freighter being loaded with nitrate and the resulting three day fire caused 752 deaths, injured another 3000 people and destroyed much of the infrastructure and housing in Texas City, Texas. The more recent shipping related accidents have involved the release of harmful chemicals, especially crude oil, resulting in severe environmental and economic impact.
Two oil accidents since 1978, in particular have resulted in more environmental regulations. The Amoco Cadiz, which was owned by the US Company Standard Oil, ran aground while off the Brittany coast of France on March 16, 1978. The ship’s steering gear was damaged by the heavy waves of storm-force gales. The French government employed approximately 8000 people to clean the entire coastline and Standard Oil paid $16.7 million to the French for restitution. Over 22,00 seabirds were killed and the oyster industry suffered for months, but the coast suffered less damage than originally anticipated because of the sea’s natural cleansing action. As a result of this accident, supertankers now have to have exceptionally strong steering gear and the primary lesson learned from this disaster was that the captain of the tanker must be the sole judge of danger to his ship and must act accordingly in order to prevent delay of proper action.
On March 24, 1989 the Exxon Valdez hit submerged rocks on a reef in Prince William Sound of the southern coast of Alaska, releasing eleven million gallons of crude oil. The captain was drunk on duty and had retired to his cabin, leaving an inexperienced crewmember to guide the ship through the Sound. The environmental devastation included the death of 34,000 shore birds, 1000 sea otters and uncounted numbers of fish, which jeopardized the areas $100 million per year fishing industry. The total cost of the spill and clean up attempts was $1.5 billion.
Prior to construction of the Alaska pipeline, many environmentalists raised issues concerning the possibility of an oil spill in the Sound, but officials of Alyeska, the oil consortium formed to pump oil from Alaska’s north slope to the terminus in Valdez insisted that a spill would be “unlikely”. They assured congress that they would have trained people on a spill site within 5 hours. However, the company disbanded its full time highly trained clean up crew during the mid 1980’w and replaced it with a part time inexperienced one. It was over 14 hours after the spill before this crew arrived at the spill site. In response to this accident Congress passed the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. This revised section 311 of the Clean Water Act to prevent future oil and hazardous substance discharges, tighten ship, personnel and equipment requirements, create a $1 billion clean-up fund; strengthen federal oil removal authority; and increase civil and criminal penalties for the spilling of oil into the sea.