Common Sense Approach to Hazardous Materials

576 Pages·2009·11.368 MB·576\576

by  Fire, Frank L.

THE COMMON SENSE
APPROACH TO

HAZARDOUS MATERIALS
THIRD EDITION
FRANK L. FIRE
Disclaimer
The recommendations, advice, descriptions, and the methods in this book are
presented solely for educational purposes. The author and publisher assume no
liability whatsoever for any loss or damage that results from the use of any of the
material in this book. Use of the material in this book is solely at the risk of the user.
Copyright © 2009 by
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fire, Frank L., 1937-
The common sense approach to hazardous materials / Frank L. Fire. -- 3rd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59370-194-9
1. Hazardous substances. I. Title.
T55.3.H3F57 2009
604.7--dc22
2009008679
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transcribed in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying and recording, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
1 2 3 4 5 13 12 11 10 09
INTRODUCTION
The subject of hazardous materials is not complicated. What iscomplex,
however, is the myriad of chemical compounds and other substances that
make up the total list of hazardous materials. The names of some of the
materials are downright stupefying, tongue twisting, and mind-boggling.
Do not be intimidated by the topic. Do not think you have to memorize
lists of thousands of chemicals and try to pronounce each name correctly,
because you don’t.
The goal of this book is recognition. It is written so that when you
do encounter a hazardous material, you will recognize it as a hazardous
material, and you will also recognize the hazard class to which it belongs.
Therefore, if you concentrate on the hazards of the top 150 or so chemicals,
you will be able to recognize probably 90% of the hazardous materials that
will be involved in an incident to which you must respond. Knowing the
hazard class to which these belong will prepare you to handle all members
of that class safely. This strategy also holds true for chemical warfare agents.
By recognizing to which class each of these chemicals belong, you will be
aware of the hazards and understand how to protect yourself while you go
about mitigating the incident.
The list of the most likely chemical substances to be involved in an
incident is not hard to produce, once it is known what chemicals are
manufactured in the largest quantity in the United States and which are most
often shipped. With the exception of radioactive materials, these substances
will be the ones encountered most often. These include oxygen, nitrogen,
ammonia, and so on. Of course, sulfuric and nitric acids are on the list, but
these are not difficult to memorize. There are some substances with difficult
names, but those can be handled with a little memorization work.
The advent of the OSHA Hazard Communication Standard and
SARA Title III drew increasing attention to hazardous materials and the
dangers they present to workers exposed to those hazardous materials in
the workplace. They also highlighted the hazards present in communities
surrounding locations where hazardous materials are stored or used, or
both. Members of the state emergency response commissions and the local
emergency response committees mandated by SARA Title III are additional
people who require education about hazardous materials. Every state now
has a team of trained responders to aid local hazardous materials response
teams when they need help in responding to a major incident. These units
are part of the National Guard organization of each state and are designated
Civil Support Teams. They were originally authorized as Weapons of Mass
xxvii
Destruction/Civil Support Teams but are trained to assist in hazardous
materials incidents and the use of chemical warfare agents.
Today, the hazardous materials problem is even greater, but the emphasis
has shifted to the problem of detecting terrorists and responding to incidents
caused by chemical and/or biological attacks.
The term firefighter is used extensively in this book, but it has several
meanings.It is used to refer to either a male or a female firefighter, whether
paid, volunteer, or a hybrid of the two. It may also refer to a public or
private firefighter or a member of an industrial brigade. The term emergency
responder should apply to anyone who is a first responder to a hazardous
materials incident, whether that person is a policeman, deputy sheriff,
state highway patrolman, disaster worker, security guard, factory worker
trained in such responses, the aforementioned National Guard team, or a lab
technician who has volunteered to help with a spill in the laboratory. That
person may be an insurance underwriter, the manager of a chemical plant,
or a dispatcher or worker in a truck terminal. The key definition includes
anyone who has any responsibility to report, respond to, or take part in the
handling of a hazardous materials incident.
The hazardous materials problem is not a new one. That problem has
been with us since the advent of the flammable liquids that we use to fuel
our automobiles, as well as the oils, gases, and other materials used to heat
or light our homes, and the raw materials to make the products we demand
as consumers. This problem has been escalating at an alarming rate ever
since. With the standard of living increasing in this country, and everyone
wanting to increase his or her living standard to keep up with the neighbors,
the demand for new products, and therefore new chemicals and chemical
reactions, is increasing rapidly.
Inherent in this increased demand for new products is the increased
demand for the raw materials that are used to make these products. More
often than not, many of the raw materials used along the line are hazardous
in one or more ways. In addition to these raw materials, the manufacturing
processes themselves may be hazardous. The firefighter, as well as other
emergency responders, must be aware of these new hazardous materials and
new hazards and be prepared to know how to handle them safely.
Today’s firefighter must learn the characteristics of these new hazardous
materials and how they can harm him, his colleagues, the taxpayers who pay
his salary, any and all innocent bystanders, the environment, and exposed
property. Little will be said in this book about the exposed property and
the environment, but this fact does not indicate that the protection of these
entities is not important. Protection of the first responder (through the ability
xxviii The Common Sense Approach to Hazardous Materials, 3rd Edition
to recognize the presence of a hazardous material) is the goal of this book;
protection of property and the environment are topics for other books.
As mentioned previously, the new hazard of chemical warfare agents
and the special circumstances surrounding their deployment and use by
those determined to cause death, injury, destruction, and pandemonium have
brought added dangers to emergency responders. The desired outcome of a
course based on this text is to provide first responders with the knowledge
to recognize the dangers that exist. This may never be more important than
in the response to incidents involving chemical warfare agents.
The emphasis in this book will be on the number one exposure in any
and all fire situations and hazardous materials incidents—the firefighter. The
firefighter is alwaysthe number one exposure in any situation to which he or
she is expected to respond. The problem is that the firefighter who does not
believe this basic premise will not usually act accordingly.
The firefighter must accept the position of number one exposure in order
to be effective in doing the necessary assigned job. A firefighter who is not
concerned with proper personal protection will be injured or killed and will
not be able to effect life rescue. Even if no life is threatened, the injured
or dead firefighter becomes a liability in the incident, rather than an asset.
Attention that should be paid to gaining control of the incident is focused
instead on the rescue of an improperly protected firefighter.
The chemical warfare agent incident may bring more emergency
responders than ever before. State governments now have Civil Support
Teams, specially trained National Guard units, to help the local emergency
responders. Special Homeland Security personnel, whether state or federally
controlled, will also respond. There will be many additional responders who
will perform many different tasks, and incident command may shift from
traditional fire department control to some other agency, probably federal.
These new people may be experts on chemical warfare agents but may know
nothing of traditional hazardous materials incident mitigation.
The incidents may be so large and affect so much of the population and
infrastructure that the response may be overwhelmed. Your training must
include what to do in this very likely situation.
With 20,000 to 50,000 new chemicals developed each year, and many
thousands of them entering the stream of commerce, the firefighter may
object to the statement that he should learn the hazards and characteristics
of each chemical, and the objection is valid. No one, chemists included, can
master the hazards and characteristics of every chemical used today, along
with the thousands of new ones added annually. But it is possible to learn
the general hazards and characteristics of 10 or 12 classes of hazardous
INTRODUCTION xxix
materials.As long as you can place a particular chemical within a particular
hazard class, you will gain a head start on handling the incident safely.
This book is designed to teach the hazards of each class of hazardous
materials and the cross hazards of individual chemicals in those hazard
classes. It consists of 19 chapters, and the suggestions for its use include
different instructions for different academic session lengths. Minimum
class time should be four hours per week. For a 15-week semester, the
first 10 chapters should be covered on a chapter-per-week basis, with the
next eight chapters covered at a rate of two chapters per week. Chapter
19 is a special case. It may be taught as an integral part of the course on
hazardous materials, with time being allotted from time taken from some of
the earlier chapters. It may also be taught as a stand-alone course, with the
time prescribed by the sponsoring school organization. The second option
is to cover the first chapter the first week, cover the next four outside the
classroom as reference reading, and cover the remaining chapters on a one-
per-week basis.
On a 13-week (quarter system) basis, chapters 1–6 may be covered at a
rate of one per week, then the remaining chapters at the rate of two per week
(plus chapter 19) for the next six weeks. A second option is to cover the first
chapter the first week, read the next four chapters outside class, cover one
chapter per week for the next 9 weeks, and two chapters each for the last
two weeks (incorporating chapter 19 where convenient).
On either academic system, the speed with which the material is covered
may be adjusted to each class, determined by the amount of material any
particular group can assimilate with ease and success. The most important
material covering the hazard classes is in the last 13 chapters, but the first
6 are an important foundation upon which to build. The first chapter is by
far the most important, as it provides the language the student will need to
understand as the material on hazard classes is being presented. The next
4 chapters are purely expansion on chapter 1 (chemistry), and mastery of
these chapters will make the rest of the book easy.
A word about the chemistry in this book is necessary here. It is not
difficult, nor is it presented in the manner that it would be in a college
chemistry course. In other words, a teacher of chemistry, even of high
school chemistry, might scoff at the manner in which some of the material is
presented and might even have a valid argument that some of the statements
are not 100% scientifically correct. The presentation of the chemistry in
this book is intentionally different, however, and has been changed ever so
slightly to make its understanding easier, in a manner that nonchemistry
students will understand with very little work. The instructor, however,
should insist on that work in this area, for it will make the rest of the book
relatively simple.
xxx The Common Sense Approach to Hazardous Materials, 3rd Edition
A very simple periodic table, similar to the one used in this book, should
be kept on display at all times throughout the course, including during all
quizzes and exams. It should include no more information than the table
presented in this book. There is no need for a periodic table complicated
with unnecessary information.
The chemistry presented in this book is designed to be the absolute
minimum that an emergency responder will need in order to understand
what each hazard class is and what can be expected in general from each
member of that class in both fire and nonfire situations. Much of the material
must be memorized. Once it is, simple deductions can be made to explain
chemical actions and reactions.
No attempt is made to list every hazardous chemical in existence,
since any attempt to do so would be immediately outdated. Nor is any
attempt made to list all the physical and chemical properties of each of
the hazardous materials included. What is attempted is the mention in the
text of every commercially valuable chemical that could be classified as
a hazardous material, so that the student may become familiar with those
chemicals that have the highest probability of being encountered at an
incident. Listed at the end of each chapter on hazard classes are the names
of additional substances that possess the same major hazard as that covered
in the chapter. These tabulations also are not designed to be all-inclusive
but can be used as reference guides to check the inclusion of a substance in
a particular hazard class. The criteria used for inclusion in the lists include
regulations for transportation. Since most hazardous materials incidents
involve transportation, a transportation accident will most probably provide
the contact with such materials. No attempt has been made to include in the
lists chemicals that are intermediates in chemical processes in manufacturing
plants. Also, any attempt to list all chemical warfare agents would be
obsolete almost at once, since terrorists are working constantly to develop
new chemical weapons.
Many hazardous materials possess more than one hazard, but they are
described in the chapter that best represents the principal hazard for that
particular chemical. They are also mentioned in the chapters that describe
other hazards that they possess and also appear in the list at the end of those
chapters.A first responder must be aware that a substance may have multiple
hazards, sometimes referred to as cross hazards.It is also important to know
that every member of that hazard class may not have all the possible hazards
listed for that class, but that each member of the class might have more than
one hazard.
There are questions listed at the end of each chapter. The questions in
this book are designed to provoke the kinds of questions that students might
think of but could be afraid to ask. They are intended to stimulate thinking
INTRODUCTION xxxi
beyond what may be discussed in class. The answers to these questions
appear in appendix F near the end of the book.
This book is intended to provide the informational background needed
to handle a hazardous materials incident. What the firefighter and other
emergency responders must do to supplement this background is to take part
in hands-on training exercises that will give them experience in handling
those incidents. Firefighters have trained long and hard to handle structural
fires, and they have succeeded in learning that subject well. They have
opportunities to supplement that training by responding to structural fires
in their response district. However, the fire services must learn to accept the
fact that the training received and reinforced in fighting structural fires is,
in most cases, totally inadequate to handle hazardous materials incidents
safely. In many tragic instances, it has been dead wrong.
It is the hope of the author that this book will contribute to the proper
education and training of the firefighter in the safe handling of hazardous
materials incidents. The firefighter is still the number one exposure and must
be protected at all costs.
xxxii The Common Sense Approach to Hazardous Materials, 3rd Edition
PREFACE
The preface to the original Common Sense Approach to Hazardous
Materials opened with this statement:
This book is written for all students of hazardous materials, including
the first responder to a hazardous materials incident, and anyone else who
wants to understand what hazardous materials are. If the first responder is a
firefighter, then a great deal of his or her training is being changed. This book
should be used in that new training. Today, with hazardous materials present
at nearly every location and occupancy in the United States, firefighters
cannot go storming into a fire where hazardous materials might be present,
as used to be taught when fighting a structure fire. Today’s enlightened chief
officer does not order “Attack, attack, attack!” as was ordinarily done at
structure fires in the past. As a well-educated incident commander, one does
not automatically throw water at the problem, as was ordinarily done at that
same structure fire in previous years. Most previous training in attacking
fires can kill firefighters today at a hazardous materials incident. Instead
of reacting as firefighters have in the past, the safe procedure today is to
come to an immediate halt, determine that what exists is in fact a hazardous
materials incident, identify what that material is, evaluate what will happen
if an attack is or is not mounted, and then use common sense in handling
the incident.
This statement is still true today. However, because of the current world
upheavals, a new type of hazardous materials has literally exploded on the
scene. This new type of hazardous material is the chemical warfare agent.
The hazards themselves are not new, and in some cases, the hazardous
materials are not new, but the way the hazardous materials incident evolves
is. Hazardous materials incidents in the past were almost always accidents,
either in transportation, storage, or in home or industrial use. These were
usually spills and leaks, or errors by users of the hazardous material. They
were sometimes accompanied by fire, but not necessarily so. But the one
constant was that the release was almost always accidental.
Today, the hazardous materials incident may be a deliberate release of a
chemical warfare agent (CWA) by a terrorist, foreign or domestic. The CWA
may be toxic, flammable, corrosive, incapacitating, permanently injuring,
or a combination of these. It is designed to be released where it will cause
the most harm to people and/or infrastructure. It is intended to be injurious
and demoralizing and to cause long-term disruptions in our normal way of
life. The incident may be planned to be so large as to overwhelm any and all
attempts to mitigate the damages.
xxi
This new type of hazardous materials incident poses new problems for
emergency responders, including increased danger to themselves. This new
topic is discussed in chapter 19, an addition to this third edition of The
Common Sense Approach to Hazardous Materials. This chapter is complex,
and it may be separated from a normal semester or quarter course on
hazardous materials and taught as a separate eight-hour or longer course. In
any event, chemical warfare agents and other weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) are a new reality for all emergency responders.
This book does not teach incident command. It is merely a primer on
hazardous materials for the first responder. It also does not prescribe the
training required to prepare responders to hazardous materials incidents. This
is done adequately by NFPA 472, Standard for Professional Competence
of Responders to Hazardous Materials Incidents, and other standards.
Nor does it concentrate on mitigation, which is the purpose of hazardous
materials training.
If the first responder is not a firefighter, but a peace officer, a property
protection specialist, or a Homeland Security responder,the response to the
hazardous materials incident will be different from that in the other types
of incidents emergency personnel have been trained to handle. Emergency
personnel are expected to use common sense in handling hazardous materials.
This book does not teach property protection or how to enforce the peace.
This book provides an introduction to the hazardous materials problem by
presenting the foundation for further study of hazardous materials, such as
hands-on courses and incident command courses. The hazardous materials
problem is not a simple one, and one course in the study of hazardous
materials will not produce an expert in the field. The new threats from
chemical warfare agents and weapons of mass destruction further complicate
the issue and will require even more specialized training.
The commonsense approach is one that everyone should take when it
is necessary to confront (and perhaps intervene in) a hazardous materials
incident. Actually, the commonsense approach is the approach everyone
should use in undertaking any endeavor. It is easily defined and easily
understood by everyone. Quite simply, the commonsense approach to
anything is nothing more than breaking down a seemingly impossible task
(or any other task) into very small pieces, each of which can be more easily
handled. As each piece is handled and assimilated, it is put together with
the piece handled just before that one, and so on. Before you know what is
happening, you have mastered (and completed) whatever it was that seemed
so impossible.
Each person reading this preface has accomplished some seemingly
impossible task in the past (at least, it seemed impossible to someone at
sometime). Remember how impossible it was to learn to ride a bicycle, to
xxii The Common Sense Approach to Hazardous Materials, 3rd Edition