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hazardous waste — English
The unwanted residue and by-products of industrial and mining processes, petrochemical production, medical procedures, military operations and nuclear applications. These waste materials cannot be handled like common domestic waste and garden refuse, since they pose a toxic, flammable, explosive, contamination or contagious threat to the local environment and/or the local or even wider community. Typical hazardous waste includes anything that might impact on the local and ancillary environment and the well-being of the people residing there or in the immediate vicinity. Hazardous waste cannot be disposed of in ordinary landfills or simply be incinerated (see “incineration”). For every type of hazardous waste, there is a strict protocol which has to be observed. Specialist waste disposal companies dispose of these materials and great care is taken that neither the environment nor the waste disposal workers are endangered by contamination. In certain developed countries regulations for the treatment of domestic waste are strictly applied and the public take great care to dispose of hazardous waste (for instance expired medicines, syringes, domestic insecticides and empty rodent and vermin poison containers) in the prescribed way since the fines for transgressing the regulations are extremely high. In developing countries like South Africa, waste disposal is a far more haphazard affair. Although the laws and regulations might be in place, they are seldom enforced. Consequently medical waste is often found in the waste dumps around informal settlements or in landfills, and squatter communities even live on operational landfills, while the mines release acid mine drainage containing arsenic and radio-active substances into river systems and the underground water supplies.
