In the courts – company fined for not having Environmental Permit

We have been helping a Bradford Poultry Slaughterhouse submit a late Environmental Permit application, after they had a scary visit from the Environment Agency pointing out that they required one.

Food sites are different from chemical factories, because there is a 50 tonne per day or […]

REACH Costs – how a micro-SME nearly came to grief.

One of our Self Help group members has had a very near miss over REACH data costs. The substances is a CMR (Carcinogen/ Mutagen/ Reprotoxin), used only as an industrial intermediate, so it has a 2010 registration deadline.

In late 2009, the member received what they […]

Gill Pagliuca, Denehurst Chemical Safety Ltd, www.denehurst.co.uk.

GHS (the Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals) is not only the basis for the EU’s new CLP regulation, covering the classification and labelling of chemicals for supply purposes, but it also underpins the classification of chemicals for transport. This is illustrated in Figure 1 […]

CLP is the Classification, Labelling and Packaging Regulation, EC No 1272/2008. It’s the EU’s way of implementing GHS, the Globally Harmonised System for hazardous substance classification.

This will run alongside, and eventually replace, the current system for classifying substances for supply, which is the CHIP regulations in the UK.
Main changes from current CHIP3
There are two new […]

New CHIP regulations 2008 and their impact on COMAH and Environmental Permits.

The latest CHIP amendment came into force on 1st October 2008, www.hse.gov.uk/chip/issues. There are a variety of changes, including a change in the rules for classifying and labelling preparations containing carcinogens, mutagens and toxic for reproduction substances; and also a change in the generic […]

Buncefield prosecutions, and what it means for your business

You might think that the Buncefield prosecutions are irrelevant because your site isn’t in COMAH, but the new Environmental Damage Regulations due to come into force in 2009, (see draft regulations and guidance) will make businesses of any type liable for cleaning up environmental damage whether they […]

One of HSE’s current “hot topics” is Local Exhaust Ventilation (LEV). This seems to coincide with the publication of new LEV guidance, HSG 258, Controlling airborne contaminants at work, a guide to local exhaust ventilation (LEV).

One of our clients in Birmingham has already been picked up on the need for an LEV to control […]

Health and Safety Executive information on Biodiesel Health & Safety
At the recent Hazards XX conference in Manchester, the HSE presented a paper on the dangers of biodiesel manufacture. They are concerned about the risks from biodiesel esterification process, mainly from the use of caustics (NaOH, KOH), and from methanol (including inhalation and ingestion risks, and […]

There is a new “plain English” guidance on “getting the basics right: how to comply with your Environmental Permit”, which is free to download from the Environment Agency website at http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/commondata/acrobat/basics_2002267.pdf.

This interesting document includes a statement on p9 “for the larger or more complex activities in Schedule 1 of the Environmental Permitting Regulations you […]

The spectacular fire at Buncefield on 11th December 2005 was extremely fortunate in that there were no fatalities, but it did result in significant loss of containment during the fire, allowing firewater to affect local land and groundwater.

Buncefield has been considered to have had a large enough adverse impact on the environment to require […]