Hazardous waste is just that… it's hazardous! What do we use in our day-to-day lives that's so hazardous? How can we limit this waste to protect our environment and ourselves?
Find the answers to these questions and more by watching this video. You’ll learn what happens when hazardous waste enters the environment, what impacts the waste can have on the environment and on us, and, most importantly, what we can all do about reducing those wastes and their risks.
Dealing with hazardous waste is far from fun, but learning about it definitely can be. Click on the games and lessons below to see how.
Available Lessons
This topic has an elementary school lesson.
This topic has a middle school lesson.
This topic has an high school lesson.
This topic has an accompanying video.
The games and lessons below offer more opportunities to learn about different household items that can be harmful. A bingo game allows students to identify different types of hazardous waste, as does an activity where students classify different hazardous materials into categories. A voting activity lets students be in charge of what to do in scenarios where they may deal with hazardous waste in the future.
Add all of these lessons to a “Green Cleaning Project Guide”, and you’ll be able to make more informed decisions about how we handle dangerous waste. That gets us one step closer to a cleaner, safer world.
There’s lots of serious life lessons to learn here in watching Household Hazardous Waste In Our Environment. At the bottom of the page, you’ll also find a ton of solid info and educational materials to link or download. So let’s get started.
Okay, we don’t need to be rocket scientists to understand some of the basic concepts that can cause household hazardous waste to become hazardous to our bodies, our families, and our lives. But what are all the ways that can happen, and what can we do to reduce or prevent it?
Let’s begin with some building blocks. So what three things do we need every day to survive? No, your Smart Phone isn’t on the list. It’s really the three foundations of supporting all life – your life included 1) Air, 2) Water, 3) Food.
The amount of pollution that’s in the air, water and food that your body uses, directly affects your health now and into the future. The formula is simple – the more pollution in your air, water and food, the greater your risk of suffering some related disease or organ failure. But what’s not so simple is how people carelessly contribute to polluting our air, water and foods with hazardous household waste and electronic waste. So that prompts the question: “What are those household hazardous wastes and how do they get into our environment?”
Just look around your garage, kitchen, bathroom, or workshop, and you’ll likely find more hazardous materials than you can count on your fingers and toes. These HHW’s include hazardous stuff such as all kinds of household cleaners, paints, paint thinners, motor oils, gasoline, pesticides, solvents, and automotive fluids to name a few. What’s not so obvious is the additional and very real pollution threat from our mountains of electronic wastes. More on that below. But let’s first look closer at the major types of HHWs – To read more, just click on “Learn More” below. Or simply begin watching the videos.
To complete the educational loop here, we’ve also included downloadable classroom lesson activities for teachers of almost every grade level to use in school along with some top links to more quality information and educational materials.
Yeah, we know it’s a bit hidden. But don’t miss Parts 6-10 in the Serious Science section to the right.
Okay, here’s the meaning on some of those labels that you read on common household products that are considered HHW.
Toxic: The word toxic alone says volumes. It’s the poisonous stuff that damages your organs that can lead to death. The word toxin comes from the ancient Greek word toxikon, which means “poison for arrows.” Toxicity is the degree that a toxic substance can damage an entire organism (like you as a whole person) or one or more of your organs – you know, the things that help keep you alive like your brain, liver, kidneys, and all those workhorses inside that body of yours. Toxins include poisonous materials like pesticides and expired medicines that can harm various organs when swallowed, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin. Some toxic materials can also build up in your body over time and cause brain damage or various cancers.
Corrosive: If you guessed this is the stuff that causes corrosion, you’re right. Materials like battery acid and bleach can dissolve other materials, including metals. Corrosive materialscan cause severe burns to skin, eyes, throat, lungs, and other tissues. In short, they can attack and chemically destroy your exposed body tissues. Some of the common acids include hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, chromic acid, acetic acid and hydrofluoric acid. Bases are also corrosive and some common ones include ammonium hydroxide, potassium hydroxide (caustic potash) and sodium hydroxide (caustic soda). Some of these chemicals can even give you the double whammy of being both toxic and corrosive. Yuck.
Ignitable: You’d probably be shocked at the list of flammable materials that are common household hazardous waste. Everyone knows about how flammable stuff like gasoline and paint thinners can easily ignite and cause severe burns. But they also can harm your body by breathing the vapors or ingesting them if they’re in the water you drink. These include lacquer thinner, turpentine, acetone, ether, alcohol, gasoline, toluene and shellac. The list grows even more when you include stuff like chlorinated and fluorinated solvents and various hydrocarbons that include fuel oil, kerosene, mineral oil and certain paints.
Reactive: These are materials that are chemically unstable and can explode or give off poisonous gases when mixed with water or other materials, such as mixing bleach and ammonia.
Medical Agents: So what happens when people dump old medicines, or pills that made them feel sicker, down the drain? Well, they dissolve and get back into lakes, streams or groundwater that other people can potentially drink. Sure, it may be diluted, but do you want to drink even a diluted soup of medicine from countless people? And unfortunately, waste treatment plants don’t have the ability to filter out residual dissolved medical chemicals that can affect us. (You may want to pay particular attention to this part in the videos).
So why should you be concerned about all these types of HHW’s? Because in many households, all those super nasty products end up in places as waste that can get into your air, water or food supplies. Here’s why it’s such a problem.
Besides the tons of electronic waste containing lead, mercury, and other toxins, the average American household generates about 30 pounds of HHW per year. That gives us an annual national total of about 1.6 million tons of the stuff. Unfortunately, much of this junk ends up in our garbage where it can find its way back into our drinking water, air, or eventually in our food chains. If HHW is dumped on the ground or poured into sewers, storm water can wash it into streams, lakes, and rivers. Many of our cities get their drinking water from these water sources. Or, HHW dumped on the ground or in landfills can seep down through the ground until it reaches aquifers, which are the underground sources of water for many families and communities that get their drinking water from wells.
Now that you know a bit about the problem, let’s take a look at some of the solutions. And we literally mean that we want to you take “a look” at solutions to HHW and electronic waste by watching the videos on this website. They show and tell most of the story of HHW and E-Waste and offer a thought-provoking springboard to either classroom discussions or lesson activities in school.
To complete the educational loop here, we’ve also included downloadable classroom lesson activities for teachers to use in school along with some top links to more quality information and educational materials.
As a bonus, here are some ways that you can help prevent polluting our air, water, food, and bodies from HHW and E-waste. It’s all based on the three R’s of reduce, reuse and recycle.
Rule #1 – Don’t generate HHW – If you don’t buy or use HHW, you won’t have any to mess with. Instead, only use non-hazardous products. If the warning label reveals that it’s hazardous, ask yourself, “Do I really need to use this product?” Safer alternatives probably exist. For example, you could use water-based latex paint instead of flammable and toxic oil-based paint. Go natural and use real compost instead of chemical fertilizers. Or try boric acid instead of commercial ant and roach killers loaded with toxic poisons.
Rule #2 – Find other ways besides chemicals – Instead of reaching for some HHW product to fix a problem, stop and ask yourself, “Is there non-toxic way I can do this?” For example, you could use sandpaper or a heat gun instead of toxic chemical paint strippers. Or you could use a plunger or drain snake (a spring of wire – not a real snake) instead of a chemical drain cleaner.
Rule #3 – Dispose Properly – Okay, so you can’t get away from all the HHW and E-waste that surrounds your everyday life. So if you must get rid of the stuff, do it properly. Read and follow the specific instructions on labels for use and proper disposal. But the real biggie is don’t dump them in the garbage. Instead, find out where and when you can dispose of them properly at HHW collections or other approved collection operations. (Watch the video to find out more on this).
Rule #4 – Spread the word to shrink pollution – So by now you’re smart enough about HHW’s and E-waste to work for the EPA. That’s great. But it won’t do much good if your neighbors are dumping their HHW’s and E-waste so that you end up drinking it. Educating yourself was the first big step. Now it’s time to spread the word to others by sharing this website and your expanding knowledge of how to make our planet a healthier place for everyone by putting HHW and E-waste in their place. Eco-warriors to the rescue!
And finally, don’t forget about all that E-waste that we generate. Watch the videos and you’ll discover why so many electronic things that look harmless can actually pollute our environment with an assortment of some very toxic metals and other harmful elements. Yep, that Smart phone of yours is on the list too… so be smart with it when you want to upgrade.
• The word toxin comes from the ancient Greek word toxikon, which means "poison for arrows".
• The average American household generates about 30 pounds of HHW per year. That gives us an annual national total of about 1.6 million tons of the stuff.
• Many toxic substances can "bioaccumulate" as they pass up the food chain in the aquatic ecosystem.
• “Biomagnification” is the significant increase in toxins in the bodies of upper level predators in the food chain. Examples are concentrations of PCB or mercury in large older fish. Any guess who's at the top of most food chains?
• Direct discharges of pollution into waterways are known as "point source" pollution.
Just look around your garage, kitchen, bathroom, or workshop, and you’ll likely find more hazardous materials than you can count on your fingers and toes. These HHW’s include hazardous stuff such as all kinds of household cleaners, paints, paint thinners, motor oils, gasoline, pesticides, solvents, and automotive fluids to name a few. What’s not so obvious is the additional and very real pollution threat from our mountains of electronic wastes. More on that below. But let’s first look closer at the major types of HHWs – To read more, just click on “Learn More” below. Or simply begin watching the videos.
Options to HHW
