Common Household Hazardous Materials

I had a thought earlier this week. I have my final paper in my Hazardous Materials class due tomorrow, which is we are supposed to pick one of five prepared questionnaires to answer in full essay form. In order to save some time in writing this weeks blog, I figured I would put a public version of it on here for this week. For next week, I will do something similar for my Hazardous Materials Final Exam. (It's an online class, and I will have the final exam submitted prior to posting next weeks blog, so there will be no moral quandaries with me posting my final exam on this blog.)

I would like everyone who reads this blog to perform this personal assignment. If you wish to post your copy of it in the comments or not is up to your discretion, as is sharing it with anyone in your realm of existence. But I do ask that you do it so that you may think more intimately about your at-home materials and your use of them. As with the lab note-book I spent the past two weeks writing about – and as with all aspects of your realm of existence, really – it is important that you are honest with yourself in performing this project.

The final paper topic which I chose to write about is Hazardous Materials in the Public Realm. Before you go ahead and answer these questions for yourself, please read the elaboration of what the terms in the questions mean immediately following the questions. I do this to be perfectly clear about what is meant by each aspect of each question, and that we are all on the same page. If something is not clear in the elaborations, please mention as such in the comments so that I can add the correction and remain perfectly honest with everyone reading this blog. There are four questions which we need to answer in this final paper of the semester. They are as follows:

1. Toxic chemicals and materials are ubiquitous in our day-to-day living. Discuss a category of chemicals that you use in your homes.
2. What are the potential impacts to your life if you decided to not use this certain category of chemicals? Is it doable?
3. What are some of the potential longer term impacts of this class of chemicals to our environment? Do we need to be concerned about it, and if so, why?
4. What are some of the things that you might do to reduce your chemical consumption? Now that you have a fair understanding of chemicals and their impacts, would you consider reducing your chemical use? Justify your stance.

There are some terms that I feel I must clarify by providing the Hazardous Materials and Chemical definitions.

Toxic chemicals and materials are those which could easily cause harm to a living organism, such as minor burns, major burns, lung damage through inhalation, illness, stomach damage if ingested, etc. Under this definition, yes, cigarettes and alcohol do fall under the definition of toxic materials. (Cigarettes cause lung damage, and alcohol causes liver damage.) Anything with a health hazard warning would fall under the category of hazardous materials.

Categories of chemicals in this context includes flammable, corrosive, explosives, oxidizers, hazardous gases, and toxic materials. Flammable chemicals – in the hazardous world as well as in common usage – are self explanatory; stuff that burns. Corrosive materials are those chemicals which would be a bad idea to keep on any surface – including but not limited to your skin and counter-tops – because the compound will eventually eat through these surfaces. Oxidizers are those substances that don't eat through surfaces so much as they soak into said surfaces and chemically react with them to form a different compound while keeping the relative shape of the surface in tact. Hazardous gases are gases that are dangerous either due to their flammable properties (the butane in your cigarette lighter) or because they are hazardous to the health of a living human (such as carbon monoxide). Toxic materials, as stated above, are materials that could easily cause some form of harm to you,

Chemical consumption is not limited to food. Consumption in this context means anything which you use which is reduced in amount anytime you use it. This includes but is not limited to paper towels, toilet paper, air dusters for computers, food and drink, plastic utensils, paper plates, energy usage, water usage, deodorant, soap, shampoo and conditioner. Anything you can think of in your realm of existence that falls under this idea of consumption would be included in this list for you.

The term “Now that you have a fair understanding of chemicals and their impacts...” in question #4 applies to the people in my hazardous materials class, who (at least should) have spent the semester studying for this class. Here, though, this phrase may be adapted to the brief descriptions I lay out in this blog.

I will do a brief version of my paper here, now:

In my bathroom, I consume (not ingest; see definition above) many toxic substances, including shaving cream, soap, and shampoo. I (like most people in the Western World) use all of these substances on a daily bases. If I were to estimate a daily consumption, I would say I use approximately 20 grams of soap, 4 grams of shampoo, and 1 gram of shaving cream per day. The soap includes in the shower as well as how many times per day I wash my hands.

The potential impact of my life through the absence of these materials is the decay of my aesthetic appearance followed by the reduction of the health of myself and the health of those around me. The only way I see the removal of these substances from my realm of existence being doable is if the physiology of humans being altered to make us not need to wash in a time frame that is so short that it may not be technologically possible presently, or if it is, would be severely technologically and economically unpractical. So no, for all practical purposes, it is not a viable option for me to remove these substances from my daily use.

These substances would be toxic if ingested. These are also hazardous materials to the environment such that these compounds, if exposed to the natural environment, would change the chemical composition of the surroundings. These chemical reactions have a low rate (on the order of months to go to completion), but react to form nitrils, the only class of nitrogen compounds which are hazardous to the growth of a sizable majority of land-based plant-life which we are presently aware of.

I would consider, I will go through with, and I already have begun reducing my consumption. This is a small percent reduction in consumption of everything, but a complete reduction of anything, which I have consumed. As a chemistry major taking this Hazardous Materials class, I have come to realize explicitly some of the chemical reactions of the materials that most likely are accidentally produced in the disposal procedures of these mass produced items. These chemical reactions have a significant probability of reducing the amount of land usable for human use as well as keeping the planet as diverse as it should be to sustain human life.

Over the course of the next year, the plan is to phase out all of my non-essential consumption. This will aide in the reduction of the chemicals that come from the reactions of what I use with the environment. As the chemistry major with an environmental emphasis, I feel as if I must.

With this, I hope you have an idea of how to do this type of report. If you have any advice to provide for making it better, please provide it in the comments. If you have any qualms, please make them clear in the comments.

Take that as you will.

-K. “Alan” Eister Δαβ