BILL ANALYSIS
SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
Byron D. Sher, Chairman
1997-98 Regular Session
BILL NO: SB 2111
AUTHOR: Costa
AMENDED: April 13, 1998
FISCAL: Yes HEARING DATE: April 20, 1998
URGENCY: No CONSULTANT: Arnie Peters
SUBJECT : HAZARDOUS WASTE REGULATION: SILVER
SUMMARY :
Existing Law requires the Department of Toxic Substances
Control (DTSC) to establish criteria for identifying hazardous
wastes. Under a set of criterion adopted in 1984, wastes
containing silver, or compounds of silver, are hazardous
wastes if either of the following applies:
1) The waste contains silver in a soluble form in a
concentration greater than 5 parts per million (ppm).
2) The waste contains total silver (both soluble and
insoluble) in a concentration greater than 500 ppm.
This bill :
1) Requires that DTSC regulate hazardous wastes containing
silver in exactly the same manner as the federal hazardous
waste program does.
2) Provides that, until DTSC adopts implementing regulations,
federal regulations pertaining to silver and silver
compounds are deemed to be California's regulations as
well.
COMMENTS :
1) Purpose of Bill . This bill is sponsored by the Silver
Council, a national trade organization that represents
companies and organizations with a common interest in the
regulation of silver resulting from photographic-processing
operations. The council believes that the California
hazardous waste program overregulates waste solutions
containing silver, the treatment process that is used to
reclaim silver from these waste solutions and the handling
and transport of the reclaimed silver. According to the
council, while silver-containing wastes do have some
environmental effects, these effects do not include adverse
human health effects. The federal model for regulating
silver-containing wastes is, therefore, adequate to ensure
that these wastes do not adversely affect the environment.
2) Health Effects of Silver. According to U.S. EPA's
Integrated Risk Information System, silver has only one
effect on humans, a condition known as argyria. Argyria
occurs when ingested silver is deposited in the skin
causing "a medically benign but permanent bluish gray
discoloration." The condition occurs only when humans take
very high doses of medication containing silver. Argyria
is very rare today because the old silver medications once
used to treat conditions like syphilis have been supplanted
by modern drugs. Silver is not a mutagen or a carcinogen
and is not known to cause other chronic human health
effects.
3) Regulation of Silver-Containing Wastes. Both the
California, and the federal, hazardous waste program
regulate wastes containing soluble silver above 5 ppm as
hazardous wastes. There are two reasons for this. First,
certain types of soluble silver can be toxic to fish.
Second, while both U.S. EPA and California have repealed
their primary drinking water standards for silver because
of its lack of human health effects, there is a secondary
drinking water standard because silver can cause a bad
taste when present in drinking water supplies above 0.1
ppm.
California regulates silver-containing wastes more stringently
than the federal hazardous waste program in two respects:
1) The state classifies wastes as hazardous if they
contain silver in insoluble form at levels over 500 ppm.
The reason for this is somewhat murky but appears to
derive from the application of a rule-of-thumb that was
applied to certain materials when the state hazardous
waste identification system was adopted in 1984. At the
time, all wastes were regulated as hazardous wastes if
they contained a chemical in a soluble form at a
concentration 100 times greater than the primary
drinking water standard for that chemical. Since there
was a primary drinking water standard for silver in
1984, the soluble threshold for silver-containing wastes
was set at 5 ppm. On the premise that if a chemical in
soluble form is hazardous, it must be hazardous in
insoluble form as well, California also set standards
for the total amount of a chemical that would make a
waste a hazardous waste. The rule-of-thumb was that
this total concentration standard should be 100 times
higher than the standard for the chemical in soluble
form. In the case of silver, this became 5 ppm times
100 equals 500 ppm.
In 1991, EPA repealed its primary drinking water standard
for silver because it has no adverse human health
effects. California followed suit, repealing the state
primary drinking water standard in 1994. Unfortunately,
the state hazardous waste program has never taken
cognizance of the fact that the original reason for
regulating total concentrations of silver in wastes is
no longer valid, and the 500 ppm total concentration
standard remains on the books.
2) The state regulates silver-reclaiming operations
under the tiered permit system, a regulatory program
that prescribes the conditions under which treatment
operations not regulated by the federal hazardous waste
program may be carried out in California. Under the
tiered permit system, treatment facilities that process
more than 500 gallons of waste photo processing
solutions a month are regulated in the conditionally
authorized tier. Facilities that process between 10 and
500 gallons are in the conditionally exempt tier.
Facilities that treat less than 10 gallons are exempt
from the system.
4) Amendments. SB 2111 has the effect of removing facilities
that reclaim silver from photo processing solutions from
the tiered permit system. If the committee passes this
bill in the form it is now in, the bill should be amended
to repeal the following provisions of the tiered permit
laws which would become obsolete: Health and Safety Code
Sections 24200.3(a)(10), 25201.5(c)(6) and 25201.5.1.
SOURCE : The Silver Council
SUPPORT : California Dental Association
California Newspaper Publishers Association
California Radiological Society
California Veterinary Medical Association
Independent Photo Imagers
Printing Industries of California
Visalia Medical Clinic, Inc.
OPPOSITION : Sierra Club