ABSTRACT
A hazardous substance is a material that may pose a danger to living organisms, materials, structures, or the environment by explosion or fire hazards, corrosion, toxicity to organisms, or other detrimental effects. What, then, is a hazardous waste? A simple definition of a hazardous waste is that it is a hazardous substance that has been discarded, abandoned, neglected, released, or designated as a waste material, or one that may interact with other substances to be hazardous. The definition of hazardous waste is addressed in greater detail in Section 19.2, but in a simple sense, it is a material that has been left where it should not be and that may cause harm if encountered.
