Description:
About Hazardous Waste
Hazardous waste is any waste that may be considered toxic, flammable (i.e. burns readily), corrosive, reactive or explosive. Many types of businesses produce hazardous waste. Some are small companies such as dry cleaners, auto repair shops, hospitals, and photo processing centers. Others are larger firms which may generate large quantities of hazardous waste, such as chemical manufacturers, electroplating companies, and petroleum refineries.
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) is the main Federal law that regulates hazardous and other wastes to ensure that they are managed properly. RCRA waste is solid waste assigned a federal hazardous waste code and regulated by RCRA either because it was managed subject to RCRA permitting standards or because it was shipped subject to RCRA hazardous transportation requirements. EPA has a list of specific hazardous wastes, defined by 504 different waste codes. Not all hazardous waste is RCRA waste.
Information on hazardous wastes comes from the EPA's Biennial Reporting System (BRS). BRS contains data from Hazardous Waste Report Forms submitted by regulated hazardous waste generators and handlers. BRS represents the only nationally consistent reporting of information on hazardous waste generation and management activities in the United States. Although the information collected is not designed to measure environmental impact, it is the most comprehensive source available for information on the management and generation of hazardous wastes. The data are collected every other year.
Some hazardous wastes are not picked up in the BRS database. Hazardous wastes that are generated in the home, like mineral spirits and old paint, are not regulated by the federal RCRA program. In addition, not all hazardous waste generators are required to report, some waste is exempted from regulation, and some waste is regulated under other environmental statutes (particularly at the state level). Some facilities may fail to report.
About this data set
The data in this set are means of RCRA waste produced in years 1989, 1991, 1993, 1995 and 1997 from the 30 most populous counties in the 12 most populous states. The data were collected from the BRS database at the US EPA's web site, and then later from the Right-to Know web site, by students at Seattle Central Community College.
As with all data, the reliability and meaning of the RCRA waste production values should be questioned immediately. In Madison County, IL, waste generated increased from 48 kilotons in 1989 to 9.5 Megatons in 1991, a factor of 200.
The aggregate data from all 12 states have an extreme positive skew (i.e., skew to the right). Students should investigate what type of function best transforms the data into a normal or bell-shaped distribution. How can summary statistics of the transformed sample data be used to make inferences about the population (all similarly populated states)?
