Hazardous Materials
Chapter One Hundred Fifty-Six
Syllabus topic 7, "Control of Multinational Corporations and Containment of Environmental Hazards"
Pages 571 to 573 of 663
In one line
MU sets this as a short note, so the answer must define a hazardous material by its properties rather than by a list, name the treaty that catches each kind, and end with the two duties that run across all of them.
What makes a material hazardous
No single treaty defines the term for all purposes. Every regime defines it for its own, and every definition is built the same way: a property that causes harm, plus a route by which the harm reaches people or the environment.
The recurring properties are these.
- Explosive, flammable, oxidising, capable of releasing energy suddenly.
- Toxic, poisonous on ingestion, inhalation or skin contact, whether acutely or over a long exposure.
- Corrosive, destroying living tissue or the containers that hold it.
- Infectious, carrying viable micro-organisms.
- Radioactive, emitting ionising radiation.
- Ecotoxic, harmful to living organisms in the environment rather than only to people.
- Persistent, resisting degradation so that it remains in the environment.
- Bioaccumulative, concentrating in living tissue and increasing up the food chain.
- Liable to long-range transport, moving far from where it was released.
The last three are the modern additions, and they are what the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants and the Minamata Convention on mercury regulate. A substance may be harmless in a single dose and disastrous over decades, and law written for acute poisoning did not catch it.
The two techniques for identifying them
By list. The instrument annexes a list of named substances or of waste streams. Certain, easy to apply, and always out of date. Basel's Annexes I and VIII and the Stockholm Convention's Annexes A, B and C work this way.
By characteristic. The instrument states hazard properties and treats anything exhibiting them as caught. Flexible, and uncertain at the edges. Basel's Annex III is a list of hazardous characteristics, used together with the streams in Annex I.
Most instruments use both, listing what is certainly caught and adding characteristics to sweep up the rest, and adding a third route: anything a party's own national law defines as hazardous. That third route is how Basel makes national definitions operative internationally, and it is examined in the Basel chapters.
Which instrument catches which material
| Material | Instrument |
|---|---|
| Hazardous waste moving between States | Basel Convention 1989, with the Bamako Convention 1991 for Africa |
| Industrial chemicals and pesticides in trade | Rotterdam Convention 1998, prior informed consent |
| Persistent organic pollutants | Stockholm Convention 2001, elimination or restriction |
| Mercury | Minamata Convention 2013 |
| Ozone-depleting substances | Montreal Protocol 1987 |
| Oil discharged or spilled from ships | MARPOL 1973/78; CLC 1969 and the Fund for compensation |
| Waste dumped at sea | London Convention 1972 and the London Protocol 1996 |
| Radioactive material and nuclear accidents | Early Notification and Assistance Conventions 1986; Nuclear Safety Convention 1994 |
| Chemicals in the workplace | ILO instruments; the Tripartite Declaration |
| Chemicals generally, as policy | The Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management, and the framework that succeeded it |
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