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An environmental hazard assessment is done to investigate whether substances (chemicals) are potentially hazardous. In essence environmental hazards are based on three different factors.
- Biodegradation, ie how easily the substance is broken down in nature.
- Toxicity (toxicity)
- Bioaccumulation, ie its tendency to be entered and stored in a biological organism.
Learn about the environmental hazard classification under the respective links.
Tools for environment hazard assessment
A first step in an environmental hazard assessment of a company is to see if there are substances in which the chemical is already classified as environmentally hazardous. To your help, you can use the Chemicals Inspectorate's Limitation Database (Kemikalieinspektionens Begränsningsdatabas) that is a list of chemicals that are banned or whose use is restricted.
Another useful tool is the National Chemicals Inspectorate (Kemikalieinspektionen) Priority Guide, PRIO. PRIO is a web-based tool that allows you, among other things, to search for topics and gather information on their environmental and health hazardous properties. PRIO even holds information about subjects that are important to replace or take precautions for their use. This page also provides comprehensive information on chemicals, as well as a step-by-step guide for working with chemicals in practice.
Examples of substances from the PRIO who belong to the textile industry are summarized in the "lists of" hazardous "substances".
Hazard scales
It is common when dealing environmental hazard assessments that you classify the subjects into color schemes, for example:
- Black substances: Totally banned.
- Red substances: those which, in accordance with the Chemicals Inspectorate’s regulations, are classified as environmentally hazardous. These are in turn divided up into dark red and pink. The pink ones are those that break down too quickly or have too low toxicity to cause harm in normal use. The dark red substances are those that can cause injury and whose settlement is a priority.
- Yellow substances: Not classified as hazardous but have environmental characteristics that make that one should be careful with their use.
- Green substances: Completely acceptable from an environmental standpoint.
- Grey material means any material that has not been assessed due to the chemical structure is not evident from the name or topic name or that the necessary environmental data are lacking . [1]
Chemical databases
- Kemikalieinspektionens Begränsningsdatabas
- Kemikalieinspektionens prioritetsguide (Priority guide), PRIO
- Chem portal – OECD:s global database for chemicals
- ESIS - European Chemical Substance Information System
- IUCLID 5 – IT-tool for handling of chemical data