March 2025 Newsletter

• New Screening tool
• Edge Cases – Management of results above the Upper Calibration Point
• PDF report security
• Changes to our Terms and Conditions

New – Screening Tools

This weekend, we are releasing three new screening tools. Based on licenced countries and selected classification engine, users can screen and report their data for: 

1. Irish Soil Recovery Sites, Domains 1 to 7 – Ireland
2. EU POPs – EU Nations and Northern Ireland
3. GB POPs – England, Wales and Scotland

You will find a tab called Screening next to the WAC tab; it is available in the Packages and Expert editions. 

Figure showing an example of the Irish Soil Recovery Sites screening tool for geological domain 1; red showing the concentration has exceeded the maximum concentration threshold (i.e. a fail), green (advisory) indicating metals that exceed the maximum concentration thresholds but are less than a factor of 1.5 (i.e. a pass) as per the guidance.

Users can also create accompanying PDF reports which can be downloaded from the Documents tab.

We also plan to add the tools that will allow users to create their own user defined screening tools for other types of assessments that they may be making on their data. If you have any examples of the types of thresholds that you want to screen your data for, please send us these examples.

More information on these Screening tools can be found in the HazWasteOnline™ Wiki.

Edge Cases – Management Of Results Above The Upper calibration Point

Sometimes a lab may determine that the value of a determinand is above the upper calibration point of a particular test method. For example, Chemtest’s UKAS accredited method SOP #2760 “Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in soils by headspace GC-MS2 can report o-xylene as <11,000 μg/kg and m&p xylene as >22,000 μg/kg.

HazWasteOnline™ can now accommodate these types of entry in a job. However, the challenge in waste classification is that in order to determine whether or not a substance is hazardous, we need to know the actual concentration. With respect to the example above, the total xylene concentration is >33,000 μg/kg (i.e. >33mg/kg); however, we don’t know whether the actual concentration is 35 mg/kg, 500 mg/kg or 1000 mg/kg etc.

HazWasteOnline™’s (current) approach is to deal with this is to assume worst case, ignore any cutoffs and trigger all Hazard Properties related to the determinand’s hazard statements. A red flag (Flag GT-01) will be shown.

If you encounter this scenario, what are your options?

1.  You could ask the lab to retest xylene using a method with a suitable upper calibration point.
2. If there is an alternative test in your results that (as in this example) will also capture the total xylene concentration indirectly, such as the TPH test for C5 to C10 aromatic fraction (GRO), then you could use that concentration as the maximum for xylene.

In the example above the results for determinand “Total Aromatic VPH >C5-C10”  (method #2780) reported a concentration of 22 mg/kg. Now while the two results (22 and >33 mg/kg) appear to contradict one another, they do indicate that the concentration of xylene is of the order of 30mg/kg in this sample. Differences between the two results come from the use of different test methods and the taking of different sub-samples.

Obviously taking more samples would provide greater reliability for the concentration of xylene.

A pH of for example >12 will only trigger HP8 Corrosive (pH threshold is 11.5). However, many classifiers (with respect to concrete fragments in soils (see Wiki)) instruct their labs to undertake the acid/alkali reserve test. If the result for the acid/alkali reserve test is entered into HazWasteOnline™, HWOL™ won’t be able to do the calculations to mitigate this high pH result. A red flag (Flag pH-02) is shown in the job adjacent to the acid/alkali reserve determinand. 

.hwol™ Data File Specification V 2.1.3 And Greater Than

The .hwol™ specification has been updated to allow importation of > X type values contained in .hwol™data file. We are working with the hwol™ labs to update their .hwol™ files to this latest version.

This revised version will also require the lab to document whether they crushed everything before testing or removed some materials using a 4mm sieve before testing. If they did remove any material then HWOL™ can make a mass correction (AKA cobble correction) to account for the missing materials which, like the moisture correction, will lower the effective concentrations of substances in the waste.

PDF Report Security

We implemented PDF security for HazWasteOnline™ PDF classification reports following instances of some reports being found where selected pages had been removed. This extra security will make it harder for the PDF reports to be manipulated. We are also adding the text “Report is invalid if pages are removed” to make sure readers of these reports check that all pages are present.

If your company does not wish to have this layer of security on exported PDF reports, usually because you include the HWOL™ report in your PDF reports, registered users can disable this security by clicking on the ‘Tools’ tab after logging in and unchecking the box for ‘Protect PDF reports’.

Changes To Our Terms And Conditions

We have made changes to our standard terms and conditions (T&Cs) due to regulatory updates and the expansion of and alterations to our services since the T&Cs were last updated some years ago.

The updated T&Cs are at www.hazwasteonline.com/terms-and-conditions/

Your options:

• If you are happy with the changes, you don’t need to do anything
• If you’re not happy with the changes, you can close your subscription without charge. You’ll need to let us know if you want to do this by 30th April 2025 or  next renewal anniversary if it falls before this date or we’ll assume that you have accepted the changes.

Summary of the changes

• Making it clearer about the user’s responsibilities and keeping their login credentials confidential.
• Expansion of IPR clauses to reference classification engines, master rulebooks, the ,hwol™ specification and .hwol™ data format.
• reference to the various Editions of HazWasteOnline™ and the addition of extra users and/or classification engines part way through a subscription term.
• Clearer language around the reactivation of a license in the 12 months following termination of a subscription by a customer.
• What happens if you want to downgrade to a lower edition of HazWasteOnline™ at the end of a subscription term.
• HWOL™ accreditation services are included in Section 5. This covers our relationship with the laboratories and the provision of our proprietary.hwol data delivery file.
• Provision of our Training services are now covered in Section 6. Substitution of delegates or moving a booking to the next available course is covered in Section 8.
• Reference to our privacy policy under the General Data Protection Regulations.