What is a Hazardous Communication Plan and Why Do I Need One?

Written By Adam J. Herrmann, Project Manager, EnviroForensics in Collaboration with Stephen R. Henshaw, PG, President & CEO, EnviroForensics. As seen in the April 2012 issue of Cleaner & Launderer.

Do you have a Hazardous Communication Program (HazCom Program) in place?  If you are a dry-cleaning facility and use tetrachloroethylene (PERC) and/or other chemicals for dry-cleaning or spotting, then you should have a current and updated HazCom Program in place.

In 1983, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) released the Hazardous Communication Standards, which was expanded to include non-manufacturing employers in 1987.  The Hazardous Communication Standards provide employees with information regarding the hazards of the chemicals they come into contact with during work or have the potential to come into contact with (“Right to Know”). 

In order to achieve a safer working environment for employees and to comply with OSHA, the implementation of a HazCom Program is mandatory when employees are or have the potential to be exposed to hazardous chemicals.  Workplace illness and injuries that are chemical related may be prevented by implementing a HazCom Program.  The HazCom Program is designed to aid in the relations between the employer and employee by opening regular lines of communication.  In addition, a HazCom Program will assist the owner/operator to avoid potential OSHA citations, violations, and related compliance costs.  Read more »

Green Clean: How “Environmental” is Remediation?

Written By Keith Gaskill, PG, EnviroForensics, in collaboration with Stephen R. Henshaw, President & CEO, EnviroForensics. As seen in the March 2012 issue of Cleaner & Launderer.

Environmental impact due to historical drycleaning practices is not a rarity.  In fact, it’s common to find drycleaning solvents in the soil, groundwater and vapor under and around current and former drycleaning facilities.  A big part of our job is to figure out the means to best remediate the environmental impact. 

The purpose of remediation is to abate the environmental impact, clean up the contamination and protect human health and the environment.  But just how much are we affecting our overall environment by cleaning your site?  Does removing 50 tons of impacted soil from under a drycleaning facility clean a site?  Where does that soil go?  Does the installation of a mechanical remediation system such as Soil Vapor Extraction (SVE) not have its own environmental impacts?  The systems run on electricity and electricity must be produced, many times by the combustion of coal or hydrocarbons which creates greenhouse gas emissions and sulfur and other non-friendly emissions.  Even the protective Tyvek suits, Latex gloves and disposable sampling equipment creates waste which is landfilled.  On one hand we are cleaning up a problem and on the other we are creating a problem. Read more »

Vapor Intrusion Assessments: Can You Trust Your Indoor Air Data?

Written by Jeff Carnahan, LPG, Senior Project Manager, EnviroForensics in collaboration with Stephen R. Henshaw, PG, President & CEO, EnviroForensics.

f you’ve ever had to hire an environmental consultant to investigate your property and collect samples, you’ve probably had to look at an analytical report from a laboratory and use it to answer some pretty important questions.  Is there contamination on my property? What chemicals are present? How much is there?  Most importantly, are the levels of contamination high enough to be causing harmful health effects? Only slightly less importantly, are they high enough to require a costly cleanup?  You needed to know the answers to all of these questions so that you could sell or buy a property, get a business loan, or maybe just to sleep at night.  With today’s trend of highly regulated vapor intrusion (VI) assessments being required at sites where dry cleaning with perchloroethene (PCE) has taken place, these questions have become increasingly important and more difficult to answer. Read more »

Vapor Intrusion Assessments: Can You Trust Your Indoor Air Data?

Written by Jeff Carnahan, L.P.G, Senior Project Manager, EnviroForensics in collaboration with Stephen Henshaw, P.G., President & CEO, EnviroForensics.

If you’ve ever had to hire an environmental consultant to investigate your property and collect samples, you’ve probably had to look at an analytical report from a laboratory and use it to answer some pretty important questions.  Is there contamination on my property? What chemicals are present? How much is there?  Most importantly, are the levels of contamination high enough to be causing harmful health effects? Only slightly less importantly, are they high enough to require a costly cleanup?  You needed to know the answers to all of these questions so that you could sell or buy a property, get a business loan, or maybe just to sleep at night.  With today’s trend of highly regulated vapor intrusion (VI) assessments being required at sites where dry cleaning with perchloroethene (PCE) has taken place, these questions have become increasingly important and more difficult to answer.

While there are challenges associated with environmental assessments of all kinds; determining the level of hazardous constituents in a building’s indoor air, assessing from where it may have come and evaluating if an unacceptable health risk exists for human occupants can be particularly delicate.  For those property owners who need answers to the questions posed in the situation above, it is extremely important that samples of indoor air collected during VI assessments are representative of the air actually being breathed by the building’s occupants and that the laboratory results can be relied upon.  Read more »

Getting your Best Cleanup for your Money

Why Won’t This Stuff Just Go Away?

Written By Keith Gaskill, LPG, EnviroForensics, in collaboration with Stephen R. Henshaw, President & CEO, EnviroForensics. As seen in the December 2011 issue of Cleaner & Launderer.

Environmental cleanups are most often a complex undertaking with both soil and groundwater contamination.  A certain amount of creativity is required to complete a site cleanup within acceptable timeframes, regulatory requirements, and of course, budget. 

Ideally, once a cleanup begins, it ends when all contaminants have been removed.  Sounds simple enough. Many times, cleanup projects start very well and appear to be heading toward closure (even under budget) but the cleanup appears to stop working.

Why did it stop working?

Read more »