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Guide for Industrial Waste Management
Chapter 2: Characterizing Waste (PDF) (24 pp, 106K, About PDF)
This chapter describes the industrial processes that generate waste and provides tools for determining the waste's chemical and physical properties. Waste characterization can be accomplished though process knowledge or leachate testing, and this chapter addresses both. This chapter also includes information on the waste characterization of volatile organic emissions. Together, these different types of waste characterization efforts can facilitate ground-water risk and air emissions analyses.
This chapter helps to answer the following questions:
- How can process knowledge be used to characterize a waste?
- Which constituent concentrations should be quantified?
- Which type of leachate tests should be used?
Resources
US EPA's Web site for online access to SW-846 - Test Methods for Evaluating Solid Wastes Physical/Chemical Methods
US EPA Region 3 Web site of Analytic Profile Fact Sheets. These fact sheets are designed to assist in the selection of analytical parameters and the associated QA/QC procedures to be utilized in Phase II Environmental Assessments under US EPA Brownfields Initiatives.
American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Technical Standards
for Industries Worldwide Web site 
. ASTM testing standards can be purchased
from this site.
