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Solid Waste Management in the Tourism Industry Read chapter Read first chapter

2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

9. Health and Safety Considerations in Waste Management

Authors : M. Shahrir M. Zahari, Izan Jaafar, Shahrul Ismail, Noor Zaitun Yahaya, Hamidi Abdul Aziz, Yung-Tse Hung

Published in: Solid Waste Engineering and Management

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Waste management is an essential element whether it is in developed or developing countries since each country needs to deal with waste products that involve the collection, treatment and disposal of the refuse/garbage. A part of effective management would include safety and health requirements since it will provide protection for the workers while reducing costs in terms of accidental and work-related diseases. Henceforth, health and safety scope play a crucial role for industries associated with high risk and accidental issues such as mining and construction, as would be available in most literature. However, it rarely includes the waste sector even though the workers are exposed towards various high-risk factors not just from the ergonomic aspect but also in the physical and mechanical element as well as biological and chemical risks. The so-called safety concern is revolved around the physical hazard during the whole management step of waste, whereas the health risk is particularly due to the bioaerosol elements (dust, bacteria, fungi, endotoxin, etc.) Even more, these health and safety issues in waste management are considered more obvious in developing countries than in developed countries since most of the waste is handled by hand/manually, and there is also a lack of awareness or consideration regarding the risk. Obviously, each country dealt differently depending on the technological advancement in which developed countries would have a wider scope involving waste risk, such as for technological waste treatment (e.g. composting and incineration) and management of quite riskier waste materials (hazardous or radioactive waste). Nonetheless, the health risk related to waste management needs to be assessed for both the exposure pathway (workers and public) and also on the health effect from the exposure, with the need to consider the confounding factors.

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previous chapter Landfill Leachate Treatment
next chapter Innovative Bioreactor Landfill and Its Leachate and Landfill Gas Management
Glossary
Confidence interval (CI)
Types of estimates computed from the statistics of the observed data
Composting
Process for decomposing organic materials into simpler organic and inorganic compounds
Colony-forming unit (CFU)
A unit used in microbiology to estimate the number of viable bacteria or fungal cells in a sample
Congenital anomalies
A structural or functional anomaly (e.g. metabolic disorders) occurs during intrauterine life and can be identified prenatally at birth or detected later in infancy.
Decibel A or dB (A)
The decibel A filter is widely used for sound measurement where the dB (A) roughly corresponds to the inverse of the 40 dB (at 1 kHz) equal-loudness curve for the human ear.
Electrostatic precipitation (ESP)
A filterless device that removes fine particles, like dust and smoke, from a flowing gas using the force of an induced electrostatic charge minimally impeding the flow of gases through the unit.
Endotoxin unit (EU)
Level of endotoxin since endotoxin molecular weight may vary a great deal from 10,000 to 1,000,000 Da
Epidemiology
Branch of medicine deals with the incidence, distribution and control of diseases
Incinerator
Furnace for the burning of waste materials
International toxic equivalent quantity (I-TEX)
An approach that facilitates risk communication internationally by reducing large volumes of analytical data into an internationally recognised single number
Non-Hodgkin’s lymphomas
Cancer that starts in white blood cells called lymphocytes, which are part of the body’s immune system
Odd risk (OR)
The ratio of odds of an event in one group versus the odds of the event in the other group
Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR)
A laboratory technique used by molecular biology based on a polymerase chain reaction where the amplification of a targeted deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule undergoing a chain reaction is monitored on a real-time basis.
Relative risk (RR)
Risk ratio is the ratio of the probability of an outcome in an exposed group to the probability of an outcome in an unexposed group
Toxic equivalency factor (TEF)
The term to express the toxicity of dioxins, furans and PCBs in terms of the most toxic form of dioxin, 2,3,7,8-TCDD
Threshold limit values (TLV)
The maximum level of an airborne substance that a worker can be safely subjected to without being susceptible to harm or injury
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Metadata
Title
Health and Safety Considerations in Waste Management
Authors
M. Shahrir M. Zahari
Izan Jaafar
Shahrul Ismail
Noor Zaitun Yahaya
Hamidi Abdul Aziz
Yung-Tse Hung
Copyright Year
2022
Book
Solid Waste Engineering and Management

Print ISBN: 978-3-030-96988-2

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-96989-9

Copyright Year: 2022

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96989-9_9