Regulatory Agencies Seek Industry Counsel

The printing industry submitted comments on to how to improve hazardous waste regulations to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which requested the feedback. The most common hazardous wastes generated by printing companies include cleaning solvents, some inks, silver from photo-processing waste, certain adhesives, shop towels, fluorescent and other mercury containing bulbs, and some electronic equipment.

Some of the key suggestions included rewriting the rules to make them more understandable, use of a common manifest for shipping wastes, simpler accumulation and storage requirements, clearer emergency response equipment location and procedures, and flexible employee training rules.

OSHA, too, asked for printing industry input on its Site Specific Targeting Program. Each year, OSHA sends a mandatory survey to 80,000 randomly selected companies requesting information on the number of injuries and illnesses experienced in the previous year. The agency uses the survey to determine which companies to inspect. The most important comments dealt with how to calculate the injury and illness rate. The document noted that the current formula unfairly penalizes companies with less than 100 full-time employees. The comments suggested that OSHA use three years of injury and illness data and not just one.

For copies, contact Gary Jones at garyjgatf@aol.com or (412) 741-6860.

In a related matter, Jones authored a fact sheet titled "Litho Printer Reduces Ink Waste With Innovative Sheetfed Ink Pumping System" for the Printer's National Environmental Assistance Center Web site (www.pneac.org). PNEAC is a partnership between industry, government and university technical-assistance providers. The group's mission is to assist regulatory agencies by delivering current, reliable environmental compliance and pollution-prevention information to printers, publishers and packagers.