This article discusses the occupational health hazards related to industrial protective coating application and removal. It explains the health hazards associated with coating constituents such as lead, cadmium, chromium, arsenic, silica, and asbestos. The article also discusses hazard evaluation, hazard controls, Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards, and industry consensus standards. It concludes with a description of containment systems to prevent environmental exposures from industrial paint removal projects.

Any threat to personal safety should be regarded as a hazard and treated as such. This article discusses threats from several sources, such as kinematic/mechanical hazards, electrical hazards, energy hazards, human factors/ergonomic hazards, and environmental hazards. It describes hazard analysis in terms of failure modes and effects analysis, failure modes and criticality analysis, fault tree analysis, fault hazard analysis, and operating hazards analysis. The article examines fail-safe designs, such as fail-passive designs, fail-active designs, and fail-operational designs. It also provides information on various types of warnings, such as visual warning, auditory warnings, olfactory warnings, tactile warnings, and tastable warnings.

The chemicals that have been used in traditional vapor degreasing have serious health and environmental hazards that have prompted the search for modified and alternative techniques. This article provides a detailed discussion on the regulatory mandates that affect the use of industrial degreasing methods. It describes the aqueous degreasing technique, which forms an attractive alternative to the traditional vapor degreasing process. The article includes information on the materials and equipment used in the process, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of hot and dip tank systems of aqueous degreasing. It explains how to convert an existing vapor degreaser to an aqueous cleaning system.

During metal powder production, powder and/or dust handling, compaction, and part finishing operations, many safety and environmental risks exist. This article is a detailed account of the types of safety hazards that can exist and the issues that occur during metal powder handling, as well as recommendations and strategies that can be employed to both prevent and protect against damaging effects from powder exposure, fire and/or explosions, or environmental impact events.

This article provides an overview of the concepts of environmental, health, and safety (EH&S) risk incidents, then discusses these concepts relative to additive manufacturing (AM): the multiple intrants, process parameters, and equipment, as well as the resulting products and wastes. The article discusses additive manufacturing hazards, which are broken down into material hazards, equipment/process hazards, and facility hazards. The environmental impact of AM and the development of EH&S standards for AM also are covered in the article.

This article describes the protective coatings technology used in naval aircrafts. It reviews the future needs and trends of the protective coatings technology based on advancing technology, environmental concerns, and operational requirements. The article discusses the standard finishing systems for aircrafts: the surface pretreatment system, primer, topcoat, advanced-performance topcoat, self-priming topcoat, and specialty coatings. It presents safe compliant solutions to environmental problems associated with the protective coatings technology. These solutions include the use of environmental regulations and hazardous materials, nonchromated pretreatments, waterborne technology, high-solids technology, and touch-up paints. The article also deals with the use of electrodeposition coatings, powder coatings, adhesive films, paint application equipment, and non-chromated sealants in the protective coatings technology.

This article is a general introduction to surface engineering of engineering components, providing an overview of the applications of surface treatments and the environmental protection regulations directly or indirectly related to surface engineering processes.

This article describes selected U.S. environmental statutes and regulations that are pertinent to material surface finishers. It provides information on the applicability, requirements, and permitting conditions of the Clean Air Act, the Resources Conservation and Recovery Act, the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act, and the Clean Water Act.

This article presents an overview of the different types of coating and lining materials available. It provides information on the various means of surface preparation and the equipment and techniques of coating application. The article discusses the coatings industry's response to the enacted as well as proposed legislation of limiting the use of potentially harmful or toxic raw materials or surface preparation and/or application techniques. The article summarizes the existing federal regulations affecting the coatings industry categorized according to the requirements of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration as well as the corresponding Code of Federal Regulation numbers.

Environmental and worker health regulations have increased the costs associated with cadmium coating application and cadmium-beating waste disposal, thus creating economic incentives for industrial users to seek cadmium plating replacements. This article presents a cadmium replacement identification matrix that includes information on the specifications, corrosion control performance, environment-assisted cracking, coating lubricity, environmental and worker health regulations, and cost and performance factors for various replacement processes.

Grinding is an extremely complex process that requires the consideration of a number of elements in order to make a reasonably adroit initial selection of a fluid or fluids for a manufacturing plant. In addition, the disposal of grinding wastes must meet the minimum requirements as recommended by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) regulations. This article explains the selection considerations of such fluids, as well as the applications and environmental issues related to the grinding processes.

This article discusses Allenby's two streams for environmental aspects of design: generic and specific concerns. Generic concerns include guidelines that provide the structure in which specific techniques can be developed and used. Specific methods are environmentally responsible for design and specific information that engineers can use. These methods include life cycle assessment, environmental impact assessment, quality function deployment, design for “X”, failure modes and effects analysis, and design for disassembly.

Risk and hazard analysis can be effectively used during design reviews to provide valuable feedback to the design to avoid failures. This article discusses the types of risks, namely, real risk, statistical risk, predicted risk, and perceived risk. It describes the principle and technical methods of risk/hazard analysis practiced in the industry to identify possible hazards and the resources necessary to avoid or reduce risks. These methods include the failure mode and effect analysis, fault tree analysis, event tree analysis, risk/benefit analysis, safety analysis, and probabilistic estimates.

The primary fossil fuels are generally defined as coal, oil, natural gas, tar sands, and shale oil. This article discusses the characteristics and the types of fuels used in fossil and fuel industries. It describes the energy conversion in fuels and outlines the efficiency of a heat engine with the help of the Carnot equation.

Bitumen for coating usage can best be categorized as two fundamental but very different types: asphalts and coal tars. This article provides a detailed discussion on asphalt and coal tar hot-melt applications; asphalt and coal tar emulsions; asphalt and coal tar cutbacks; and coal tar epoxies. It reviews the similarities between asphaltic and coal tar coatings and discusses the health and environmental concerns of these materials.

This article discusses the requirements for safe design, installation, operation, inspection, testing, and maintenance of sintering atmosphere generators and atmosphere supply systems for both personal and environment safety. The four intrinsic dangers associated with producing and using common sintering atmosphere gases are explosion, fire, toxicity, and asphyxiation.

Ceramic and glass manufacturers take environmental regulations into consideration during all stages of the product cycle, from research and development to purchasing, processing, end use, and disposal. Ceramic and glass products are finding application in the construction industry and as raw materials for other processes. This article describes the recycling of in-process scrap and industrial wastes (fly ash, red mud, metallurgical waste, and other waste products), and applications of these recycled products. It focuses on environmental regulations such as Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act requires all states to meet minimum emissions standards for nitrogen-oxygen compounds, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide.

The hazards associated with thermal spray deposition processes include ultraviolet and infrared radiation; acoustical noise; and by-product production in the forms of nitrous oxides, ozone, fumes, and dust. The most important consideration in health and safety is to use the engineered controls of hazards. This article provides a brief description of the spray booth, the most commonly used engineering tool to separate the operator from the thermal spray process and confine the associated hazards. It also presents guidelines on the proper and safe handling of industrial gases and ventilation and heat exhaust. The article provides information on the personal protective equipment for eyes and skin from radiation, and ears from noise. It also discusses other potential safety hazards associated with thermal spraying, namely, magnetic fields and infrasound.

Health and safety are critically important issues, and there are numerous aspects of the production and use of metal powders that may entail exposure to hazardous conditions. This article provides a discussion on the issues associated with the safe production and handling of metal powders and the safe operation of continuous mesh belt sintering furnaces with combustible atmospheres. It also provides a comprehensive high-level overview of the safety-related issues and concerns related to the use of compacting presses in the manufacturing sector.