Polychlorinated Biphenyl - Assignment Example

Polychlorinated biphenyl is an organic chemical compound that is synthesized when biphenyl is combined to chlorine. It has quite a number of uses like in electrical apparatus as coolant fluid or cutting fluid in some material. Over the years, concerns of its use have sparked marked attention over some of the harmful effects it has to people and the environment (Croft 23). PCBs are known to be cancerous agents when one is exposed to them for a very long time. In addition, they have reproductive, endocrine and neurological effects when one is exposed to it.

Therefore, when we were digging through the building walls contaminated with PCBs, we had to be careful with how we were going to make the overhead bay extension in the Aluminum Casting plant. Basically, we first took precaution by wearing protective gears before going to the area. Next, to avoid any physical contact with humans, we used the help of an excavator which was manually controlled by a specialist. Basically, as we did the excavation, we managed to decontaminate the building wall by use of diesel fuel plus rags.

The very purpose of the exercise was not to produce any liquid so that no one in that area could get exposure through breathing (Croft 45). After the exercise, we were left with two issues. 1. How to dispose the contaminated rags? and 2. How decontaminate the excavator?. These were challenging for us, but we opted to place the rages in containers and labeled with symbols that said hazardous. The very purpose of labeling the containers as hazardous was to avoid people from mistaking it from other containers while transporting and disposal (Croft 43).

The containers had to be sealed tightly to ensure that in the event of the containers dropping of, they would not cause the contaminated rags to falls off. Another precaution that was used was the decontamination of the excavator which had been exposed as it bore through the contaminated building wall that had PCBs. The process of decontamination of the excavator had to be done by chemical means (Croft 83). In this process, we had to use chemical agents that caused dechlorination of the compound.

Basically, the chemicals acted by breaking down the compound into chlorine and biphenyl. Furthermore, to ensure completed decontamination, we had to ensure that the excavator had been successfully removed from the warm zone so as not to contaminate the excavator again.Finally, carrying out such a task that involves a chemical agent that causes environmental pollution, is not an easy task as it entails a lot of decontamination to ensure that it does not contaminate the environment or expose others to it.

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