Potato chips and Prop 65 in California

The State Attroney General of California Jerry Borwn said Heinz, Frito-Lay, Kettle Foods and Lance had agreed to sharply lower acrylamide levels in the potato chips and french fries as part of a settlement announced last Friday.

Acrylamide is a byproduct of frying, roasting and baking foods, particularly potatoes, that contain certain amino acids. It is also one of the Prop 65 chemicals in California. The Prop 65 list identifies chemicals that can casue cancer or reproductive toxicity. Under state law, all products sold in California that contain any Prop 65 chemicals must bear a warning label.

Prop 65 is one of the many topics that we cover in our 2-day environmental seminars.

What an agency inspector looks for in an inspection

When an agency inspector comes to inspect your hazardous waste storage area, he looks for things like waste manifests, reports, labels, and plans. Why? Because it is easy to find violations in these areas - either you have filled them out properly or you have not. It is straightforward.

The video below is from an inspector at the California Department of Toxic Substances (DTSC). Listen to what the DTSC inspector has to say about what he looks for in your hazardous waste labels.

done

The Practical Implementation of an EMS

On September 1, 1996, the International Organization for Standardization finalized its ISO 14001 EMS standards. They have since been updated in 2004. The term “iso” happens to be the Greek word for “equal”. These standards are designed to be “equal” globally. For example, a company in Singapore will have the same set of standards as one in Germany if they both adopt ISO 14001. 

 

It is important to keep in mind that ISO 14001 is not a legal requirement. It is a voluntary set of management standards that may improve your environmental performance. EPA encourages industries to adopt these standards but offers no specific incentives (such as reduced frequency of inspections) in return. Nonetheless, the benefits of ISO 14001 EMS standards are numerous. Many companies get ISO certification for business or marketing reasons. Simply put, they do it because their industrial customers require it. Others adopt the standards in order to improve their environmental performance. In either case, companies with an ISO 14001-like EMS are seeing many benefits, regardless of whether they get certified. For example, with an EMS in place, they find out that:

 

1. All their employees are now receiving consistent level of training.
2. Their employees are operating out of a common set of standard operating procedures.
3. The general public now has a better image of the organization.
4. Their environmental liability is reduced. 
5. Their waste management costs are now lower.
6. They now have a better overall environmental compliance record than before. 

The ISO 14001 EMS standards are in many ways a common sense approach to environmental management. It may surprise some of you that you already have many of the key elements of an EMS in place within your organization.

 

Here are some of the practical steps you can take to develop and implement an ISO 14001 EMS.

 

The first step you need to do is to secure the visible support of your senior management. An effective EMS must have top-down support that is visible to everyone in the company. You will also need a senior officer in the company to be the “environmental person in charge”. This person must have the confidence of senior management and has the authority to plan, enforce and maintain your EMS. This is also the person you go to get the resources you need to implement the EMS.

 

You then need to develop an Environmental Policy and have your CEO sign off on it. The Policy is the framework on which your EMS is based. In developing the policy, be realistic and do not over promise. And remember that your Environmental Policy represents your company’s vision to your employees and the rest of the world.  So you want to make sure you keep the promises made in the policy. Keep your environmental policy simple. Do not clutter it up with idealistic prognostications that sound good on paper but are hard to implement. The policy should clearly state the company’s commitment to continual improvement and pollution prevention as well as its commitment to comply with applicable environmental laws and regulations.

 

Once prepared, the policy must be clearly communicated to all employees and other interested third parties. To do that, you can post your environmental policy throughout the plant – similar to the way your safety policies are posted. You can also include the policy in your employee newsletter or post it on your intranet and company website.

 

The next step is planning. This is by far the most difficult step. You need to identify all the “significant environmental aspects” of your operation. ISO 14001 defined an “environmental aspect” as an “element of an organization’s activities, products, or services that can interact with the environment.” So you need to look at what you do throughout your company that affects the environment – both positively and negatively. Some examples of these environmental aspects would be air emissions, wastewater discharges, hazardous waste generation, heart generation, consumption of raw materials, and recycling of waste products.

 

The best way to do this is to involve your line supervisors and have them go through the process of identifying these environmental aspects. The more people involved in the process, the more ownership your employees have. An effective EMS also requires bottom-up involvement in addition to top-down support.

 

The term “significant” is not defined in the ISO 14001 standard. So it is up to your team to determine what is significant and what is not. Do not get hung up on an endless legalistic argument over this term. A general rule of thumb is to consider both the severity and frequency of the impact resulting from a specific aspect. Other factors you should look at include the following: Is the activity regulated by law? Does it have the  potential to harm public health or the environment? Does it affect your neighbors and community?

 

As part of the planning step, you need to set up your company’s pollution prevention goal. For example: Do you plan to reduce your hazardous waste generation by 5% or 10% each year? Whatever your goals may be, make sure they are realistic and implementable. And make sure you have the resources to meet the goal. If your goals are so high and lofty that your company fails to meet them during the first year, it may have a demoralizing effect on your employees. Take small steps instead. You can always set higher goals later. Remember that your EMS is a living document – a work in progress.

 

The next phase is implementation. Here you set out the procedures by which your company implements its planned goals and objectives. This is where the rubber meets the road. All your procedures must be clearly documented. Management of documents is an essential element of an EMS.  You need to have someone in charge of updating your procedures and ensuring that outdated procedures are removed from use. For example, you will need to set out procedures on how you stay current on environmental regulations that affect your operations. There is nothing more dangerous than using outdated regulations.

 

Records control is also paramount. Your EMS must ensure that your environmental records are accurately kept and easily accessible to those who need them. For example, all your hazardous waste manifests and related papers should be kept at one central location and one person should be responsible for getting the signed copy back from the disposal company.

 

Bear in mind that “documents” and “records” are not the same. Documents tell you what you need to do. Records are proof that your have done it. The difference between “documents” and “records” is that documents can be changed and records cannot. For example, your Standard Operating Procedures for running a wastewater treatment plant is a document. Your monthly Discharge Monitoring Reports that you are legally required to submit to the agency is your record.

 

Your implementation step will also include emergency planning and training of employees.  Prevention of chemical accidents should be a top priority in your EMS. The key here is to assign specific responsibilities to individuals for safe handling and storage of chemicals. Make sure that someone is responsible for checking the Material Safety and Data Sheet for safe storage conditions. Know what chemicals you have on hand and develop contingency plans to deal with them before you have a spill. These are all elements of an effective EMS.

 

In terms of training your employees, your EMS should identify who should receive what level of environmental training based on needs. Both the operator who generates and handles hazardous wastes and the clerk who fills out the hazardous waste manifests require training – but not at the same level of intensity. In other words, focus your training on significant environmental aspects. Your training requirements and procedures should be clearly spelled out in your documents. Evidence of training received will be contained in your training records. 

 

ISO 14001 is predicated on the continual improvement concept of Plan-Do-Check-Act. As stated earlier, this concept must be part of your policy. Now that you have planned and implemented an EMS, it is time to check it by performing an audit. The audit can be done internally (by your own staff) or externally (by outside auditors). Whichever way you go, you must ensure that you have the financial resources and management commitment to fix any problems you uncover in the audit in a timely fashion. This is particular critical if your audit uncovers some serious non-compliance legal issues. Failure to correct known violations quickly can and will be used against you in enforcement cases.

 

ISO standards require you to keep detailed records of all your audit results if you are planning on getting certified. That’s the price you pay for certification and all the benefits that come with it. If you are not interested in getting ISO 14000 certified, you may wish to forego the extensive audit reporting requirements. Your attorney will probably sleep a little bit better at night. Having an EMS in place without the certification will still get you many of the benefits. Regardless of whether you record your audit results, you should always do everything you can to fix any uncovered problems in a timely manner.

 

The last step in the continuous improvement cycle is for your senior management to review the status of your EMS and make improvements as needed. Your environmental officer in charge should play a lead role in this effort. It is recommended that you do a complete review of your EMS at least once a year.

 

EMS involves a lot of documentation. There is a company in Oregon that can help and guide you through the complicated document preparation process. If you decide to seek help, you should still be involved in the process. Remember - ownership is the key to success. People don’t wash their dirty rental cars before returning them to the rental car companies because they don’t own them.

3 things to remember when you have a chemical spill

It goes without saying that the first thing you need to do when you have a spill is to stop the spill and ensure the safety of your employees and the community. After you have done that, there are three things you should keep in mind:

 

The first thing is to determine your Federal Reportable Quantities. Determine the amount of chemical you have spilled and check to see if it has exceeded EPA’s federal reportable quantity (RQ). You can do that easily by looking up the RQ in EPA’s List of Lists. Remember that the RQ of a chemical always refers to its pure form in a mixture or compound. For example, if you spill a mixture that contains 50% of X and the RQ for X is 400 lbs, you will have to have spilled more than 800 lbs of the mixture for you to exceed the RQ.  You must report any spilled amount over the RQ to the National Response Center at  1-800-424-8802.

 

The second thing to remember is to check your state’s own reporting requirements. Many states have their own spill reporting requirements in addition to the Federal reporting requirement. States such as New Jersey, California, New York and Iowa(just to name a few) require reporting of all spills regardless of quantities. For example, in Californiayou must report any amount of chemical spill to the California Office of Emergency Response unless you can show that “there is a reasonable belief that there is no significant present or potential hazard to human health, the environment or property.”  The onus is on you to determine if the spill was “significant” or not.

 

We have prepared a summary chart showing the various spill reporting requirements in all 50 states. Use it as a guide. Check out the state’s website for more details.

 

The third thing to remember is this. If you are not sure if you should report a spill, report it.

 

Here is a short video clip on the subject:

 

done

Dirty Dishes vs. Clean Dishes

A good consultant friend of mine Rosalie sent me a recent article published by the Harvard Business School. The authors Michael Toffel and Jodi Short looked at the effectiveness of EPA’s voluntary disclosure policy. The paper was called “Coming Clean and Cleaning Up: Is Voluntary Disclosure a Signal of Effective Self-Policy?”

 

The paper find strong evidence of the effects of self-policing “among facilities with clean past compliance records, but find no such evidence of among facilities with more problematic compliance histories”. In other words, EPA’s policy of self disclosure works better with companies that have a history of compliance than those with poor compliance records.

 

This finding confirms the answer to the age-old marketing question: “Do you sell dish washing detergents to people with clean dishes or people with dirty dishes?” Intuitively, you would think those households with dirty dishes would be good customers. But in reality, it is those people with clean dishes who buy detergents. The dirty dishes people have dirty dishes because they don’t want to buy the detergents.

 

In my 10 years of conducting environmental seminars for over 1500 companies, the overwhelming majority of companies that attend my seminars are the ones with relatively clean environmental records. They stay that way by being conscientious about getting training. These are the ones with clean dishes.

 

The companies that have bad compliance records don’t believe in training their employees. That’s why they have bad compliance records.   

How to store pressurized gas cylinders safely

On June 24, 2005, fire and explosions swept through the Praxair Distribution, Inc., gas cylinder filling and distribution center in St. Louis, Missouri. The accident occurred when gas released by a pressure relief valve on a propylene cylinder ignited.

 

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) investigators noted the accident occurred on a hot summer day with a high temperature of 97 degrees F in St. Louis. At Praxair, cylinders were stored in the open on asphalt, which radiated heat from the direct sunlight, raising the temperatures and pressure of the gas inside the cylinders. At approximately 3:20 p.m., a propylene cylinder pressure relief valve began venting. CSB investigators believe static electricity, created by escaping vapor and liquid, most likely ignited the leaking propylene.

 

The CSB issued Safety Bulletin listing several best practices for cylinder storage at gas repackaging facilities, including fire protection systems to cool cylinders and limit the spreading of fires, adding barriers to contain exploding propylene cylinders within the facility, and gas detection systems that can sound alarms and activate fire mitigation systems.

 

The following video shows the initial fire spreading quickly to other cylinders. Exploding cylinders - mostly acetylene - flew up to 800 feet away, damaged property, and started fires in the community. The fire could not be extinguished until most of the flammable gas cylinders were expended. An estimated 8,000 cylinders were destroyed in the fire, which took five hours to control.

 

We can all learn from other people’s mistakes.

done

Analysis of a major chemical accident

We can all learn from other people’s mistakes. The following paragraphs are taken from a press release on its investigation of a major chemical accident by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board:

The Point Comfort complex, on the Texas Gulf Coast, is the largest Formosa facility in the U.S., employing 1,400 full-time workers and 400 contactors. The accident occurred in the plant’s Olefins II Unit, which converts either natural gas liquids or naphtha into products such as propylene and ethylene. The accident began when a vehicle - a forklift towing a trailer loaded with cylinders of breathing air used in maintenance - snagged a valve, pulling it out of the system. This caused the release of a large volume of propylene which then ignited, creating a large fire. The initial explosion knocked several operators to the ground and burned two men, one seriously. Fourteen workers sustained minor injuries evacuating the complex.

The CSB Case Study concludes that had the Olefins II unit been equipped with automated shutdown valves it may have been possible to stop the propylene flow, limiting the size of the fire. Operators were unable to reach manual valves to stop the release due to the presence of the growing vapor cloud.

The investigation noted that the valve hit by the trailer was unguarded, and vulnerable to being hit by vehicles. The Case Study also noted that some steel supports were not fireproofed, and collapsed. This caused the failure of pipes designed to carry flammable hydrocarbons to the unit’s flare system, where they could be safely burned in the atmosphere. Without this safety system in place, pressurized flammable gases continued to feed the fire, which burned for five days. In addition, the CSB found that flame resistant clothing was not required for all employee activities within the Olefins II unit where there were large quantities of flammable liquids and gases.

CSB Board Member John Bresland said, “This began with a seemingly minor event, in which a trailer bumped into a drain valve. But the incident had disastrous consequences because the facility was not better prepared for a large chemical release. The fires and explosions at Formosa’s Point Comfort plant provide compelling reasons to analyze vulnerabilities that could lead to a major chemical accident.”

What follows is a short video from the CSB on its investigation and findings:

Basics on hazardous waste training requirements

Here is a short video from California’s DTSC on the training requirements for hazardous waste generators:

done

 

A few pointers on how to manage an agency inspection

Let’s look at  a few pointers on how to manage an agency inspection.

 

If you know you are going to be inspected, you need to do you own mock inspection to make sure everything is fine. Fix any problem before the inspector shows up. 

 

There is absolutely no need nor is it desirable for you to write down all your violations. You should focus your energy on fixing the problems.   

 

Be sure that you have read and understood all your permits and what they require you to do. For example, if your air permit requires you to keep track of the amount of each coating used during each day, you should do so.

 

Make full use of agency’s inspection checklists that are available on many agencies’ websites. The checklists show you what the inspection will be looking for. Use these lists in your mock audit.

 

Take the time to look at agencies’ inspection manuals. EPA has a manual on how to conduct a multi-media inspection. There is also one on conducting hazardous wastes inspection.  These are the same documents that the agencies use to train their own inspectors. They will provide you with a lot of insights.

 

You can download these from Norman’s website. 

 

Always try to resolve issues at the lowest possible level! Why?,  because The higher the level you go, the less control you will have of the process. The last thing you want is to have a judge who has no idea how you make your products telling you how you should make your products.

 

This is one of the many topics we cover in our popular 2-day environmental seminars.

 

Here is a short video on how to manage an agency inspection.

 

done

The basic elements of an emergency response plan

Every business that stores hazardous wastes on site are required to have an emergency response plan. If you are a small quantity generator - one that generates less than 2200 lbs (approximately five 55-gallon containers) each calendar month - you do not need to have a WRITTEN plan. But you still have to have a plan.

An emergency response plan provides answers to the following questions: 

1. Who is in charge?
2. Who are you going to call?
3. Where can you find the emergecny response equipment?
4. Do you know how to use the equipment?

Here is a short video clip from the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) on this topic. Very instructive and straight forward. Enjoy the video.

done