Hazardous Waste - Household Hazardous Waste

Household Hazardous Waste

Main article: Household Hazardous Waste See also: Hazardous waste in the United States

Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) (also referred to as domestic hazardous waste) is waste that is generated from residential households. HHW only applies to wastes that are the result of the use of materials that are labeled for and sold for "home use". Wastes generated by a company or at an industrial setting are not HHW.

The following list includes categories often applied to HHW. It is important to note that many of these categories overlap and that many household wastes can fall into multiple categories:

  • Paints and solvents
  • Automotive wastes (used motor oil, antifreeze, etc.)
  • Pesticides (insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.)
  • Mercury-containing wastes (thermometers, switches, fluorescent lighting, etc.)
  • Electronics (computers, televisions, cell phones)
  • Aerosols / Propane cylinders
  • Caustics / Cleaning agents
  • Refrigerant-containing appliances
  • Some specialty Batteries (e.g. lithium, nickel cadmium, or button cell batteries)
  • Ammunition
  • Radioactive waste (some home smoke detectors are classified as radioactive waste because they contain very small amounts of a radioactive isotope of americium - see: Disposing of Smoke Detectors).

Read more about this topic:  Hazardous Waste

Famous quotes containing the words household, hazardous and/or waste:

    “When it comes to housework the one thing no book of household management can ever tell you is how to begin. Or maybe I mean why.”
    —Katharine Whitehorn (b. 1926)

    “Falling in love with a United States Senator is a splendid ordeal. One is nestled snugly into the bosom of power but also placed squarely in the hazardous path of exposure.”
    —Barbara Howar (b. 1934)

    “Such is the remorseless progression of human society, shedding lives and souls as it goes on its way. It is an ocean into which men sink who have been cast out by the law and consigned, with help most cruelly withheld, to moral death. The sea is the pitiless social darkness into which the penal system casts those it has condemned, an unfathomable waste of misery. The human soul, lost in those depths, may become a corpse. Who shall revive it?”
    —Victor Hugo (1802–1885)