Hazardous Chemicals/Substances:
Hazardous Chemicals/Substances: |
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One environmental attribute of a product is the amount of environmentally problematic chemical substances in the product itself or used during the production phase.
The following will discuss different methods on how to measure and improve the environmental performance of products with regards to chemicals.
This section gives inspiration on how metrics for reduction of dangerous chemicals/substances can be set during the development of new products. A coarse method for overall hazard reduction is given.
The section does not give specific instructions on safe handling of chemicals and substances applied during development and production. These issues should be dealt with by the health and safety organisation. In general, co-operation with the health and safety organisation should be established during development of a new product.
Chemicals/substances entering your company can either be processing chemicals (e.g. solvents for degreasing and cutting fluids for metal processing) or substances intended for the product (e.g. stainless steel and solder material). Reduction goals can be set for both kinds and in order to keep the overview it is advantageous to set separate goals for the two types.
The legislation has put up a number of restrictions for the use of chemicals. For instance, it has been prohibited to use freons for PWB cleaning operations, and the Danish legislation on carcinogenic substances prohibits the use of carcinogenic compounds, if a suitable alternative exists. Further, there might be specific restrictions for exactly your product. These legal demands should be monitored and up-dated as part of your (environmental) management procedures by contact to relevant authorities, trade organisations etc.
Legislative demands must be part of your Requirements Specification, and should also be taken into consideration when planning the production setup.
It is also worthwhile to pay attention to the new EU directives on electronic and electrical equipment.
Your customer(s) might put up demands on your processing operations and the final product, e.g. the Ericsson lists, which Ericsson forwards to their suppliers.
These demands also have to be included in your "Requirements Specification", incl. production process planning.
The Danish-EPA has published two lists:
The substances on both of these lists have been chosen according to their inherent toxicity, and the substances on the 'undesirable list' has been chosen according to the amounts used.
The lists have been published as a guide and warning for the industry, as it may be expected that the authorities will start to prohibit and/or in other ways regulate these substances.
It is therefore recommended to substitute as many of these substances as possible.
It should be part of the Requirements Specification how substances appearing on these lists should be handled by the Development.
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NB!: Please note that for some of the substances, the list of undesirable substances might limit action to specific application-areas. When your product contains substances registered on the list, we recommend that you consult the explaining text accompanying each group of substances on the list. |
See Examples of "Lists of Banned or Restricted Substances".
On top of the above demands it is recommendable to further monitor and strive to reduce the use of hazardous chemical substances. The recommendation is to use a ranking system based on the EU classification system for hazardous chemical substances and preparartions.
Chemical substances are grouped into four groups according to the so-called UPM-system (Unwanted, Problematic, Manageable):
The development should strive at using as few U (in the first run) and P chemicals as possible.
In your requirements specification you may state that you do not want to use U substances, if an alternative exists. Further, if you are making a new version of an existing product, you may compare the number/amount of U, P and M in your new product with the old product in order to reduce the hazardous impact.
However, if you only have M-substances, there is still room for optimisation. These possibilities should be considered in co-operation with your safety department.
The latter category "No data" should be handled case by case. A lot of substances are not included in the EU list of dangerous substances. For these substances (or products containing these substances), the supplier has to self-classify the substance/product according to the EU classification criteria. You should therefore consult your supplier and ask for an EU-classification.
A starting point for a dialog with the supplier may be the "Draft advisory list for self-classification of dangerous substances".
This list has been published by the Danish EPA. The classification of the substances on the list has been estimated by computer modelling using so-called QSAR methods (QSAR: Quantitative Structure Activity Relationships). In a QSAR, one or more properties of a substance (e.g. carcinogenicity) are predicted based on the chemical structure of the substance.
The following precautions should be applied when using the list:
When applying the environmental calculator, the chemical substances in a product or process that are contained in the "EU list of dangerous substances" as well as the "Draft advisory list for self-classification of dangerous substances" will be indicated.
See example on using this system.
All lists and the UPM-ranking can be found in the Database. Please see previous section for explanation and limitations associated with these lists. Note especially that even though a substance is not on the EU list of dangerous substances it may still be covered by the criteria for classification.
As already indicated, it is advantageous to separately analyse and set goals for chemical substances in your product and process chemicals. This procedure is also reflected in the example on chemical metrics, which it is advisable to briefly look through before proceeding with this section.
One of the possible outputs from 'Environmental calculator II' is a list indicating the substances in your product, which are registered on:
However, when applying 'Environmental calculator tool II', the automatic search does not necessarily catch all list appearances, even if you have the CAS-number for the substance. The reason is that some substances on the lists appear as groups of substances without CAS-numbers, e.g. 'lead and lead compounds' on the EU list of dangerous substances and 'cadmium and cadmium compounds' on the list of undesirable substances (See also table 3 and 4 in the example).
In other situations, the automatic check cannot be accomplished, because you do not have a CAS-number for the substance in your product. A list of substances in your product can be derived by means of the macro 'Substances' as described in 'Environmental Calculator Tool II'. From this list, you can spot those substances without CAS-numbers or those where the CAS-number is bracketed.
Therefore, whether or not you have the necessary CAS-numbers, a manual search on the lists is necessary in order to make the picture complete. This can be accomplished by applying:
The 'Manual_Check_for_dangerous_chemicals_Tool'
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Information on your process chemicals should be obtained from the safety data sheets or, when these are inadequate, from your chemicals suppliers.
Your process chemicals may be 'pure substances' (as e.g. toluene) or consist of several substances (e.g. a cutting fluid).
It is advisable first to list all your process chemicals, including all substances in the products consisting of more substances (see also table 2 in example).
You may approach the process chemicals in two ways. Manually, by going through your process chemical list by application of the 'Manual_Check_for_dangerous_chemicals_Tool' described above,
or automatically, by running an automatic search by application of:
The 'Spot the dangerous chemicals Tool'
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Warning!The same limitations as described for the automatic output for 'Chemicals/substances in your product' apply for this output. In order to ensure a complete search you therefore have to manually go through the list as described under 'Chemicals/substances in your product' above. |
For chemical products that consists of many different chemical substances (like a cutting fluid or a glue) it might be quite difficult to obtain the specific information about the composition and the relevant CAS numbers.
In this case you can determine the UPM-score for your product. This can be obtained by applying:
The 'UPM generator Tool'
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When by means of these tools you have generated a list of unwanted and/or problematic chemical substances, it is highly recommended to get advice from people with some toxicological expertise.
This might be from your company's environmental department, your Health and Safety Service or a consultancy.
They might advise you about how to prioritise in relation to the specific circumstances for your manufacturing processes and your products. Circumstances to consider are (among others):
See also example.
Warning:
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