Market Challenges
THE MAGAGINE DEVOTED TO NICKEL AND ITSAPPLICATIONS
|
 |
THE BENEFITS OF USING nickel-containing products, such as this stainless steel pipeline, need
to be balanced proportionately with the risks to environment, health and safety.
|
PDF of this article (450 kB)
|
FREE subscription |
Environment, health and safety risks always present a dilemma to marketers, namely how to communicate the
risks inherent in the use of a product, and to balance those risks proportionately with the benefits of the
product.
In the 1980s and early '90s, the focus of the Nickel Development Institute (NiDI) was almost entirely on the benefits of nickel-containing materials. In recent years, we have become more sensitive to the hazards and risks associated with the full life cycle of nickel and nickel-containing materials, and the need to communicate our growing knowledge in this area. The publication of our nickel life cycle inventory (LCI) in 2000 signaled that change.
Consider the water industry. Austenitic stainless steels offer numerous advantages in terms of strength, corrosion resistance, life-cycle costs, and low maintenance . As a result of ongoing efforts that emphasize these many advantages, stainless steel producers are making significant inroads into water treatment and distribution markets in India, China and Southeast Asia. More and more builders of high-rise buildings in Singapore, Thailand and China, for example, are specifying austenitic stainless steels for water distribution piping. Demand is so brisk in Asia that one manufacturer of pipe fittings in China is using 500 tonnes of stainless steel per year, and there are plans to triple that amount in the next few years.
Demand in this sector in North America is on the uptick as well, and in this issue we report on two major applications of nickel stainless steels in the water industry: an 11-kilometre water pipeline in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado, U.S.A. (click here) and ten 36-tonne Archimedes screws in a wastewater treatment plant in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. (click here).
However, regulators, particularly in Europe, are considering changes to how the hazards associated with nickel and nickel compounds - particularly soluble nickel compounds - should be classified. This could have important implications for the water industry, among others.
The risk assessment of nickel and nickel compounds currently underway in the European Union (EU), therefore is providing an opportunity for us to revisit our understanding of the hazards associated with nickel and to make intelligent, proportional responses to any risks that might be identified and found to be unacceptable. Moreover, the European risk assessment will eventually be reported into a global hazard-based identification process in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
In this context, NiDI and the Nickel Producers Environmental Research Association (NiPERA) have in recent years dedicated more resources to health and environmental research. (For details on the ongoing nickel risk assessment process in Europe, see www.nickelforum-eura.org)
Specifically, we are gathering scientific data related to human health and
the environment,
conducting socio-economic
impact studies and expanding our means of communicating
information.
The European nickel risk assessment is providing a new and comprehensive review of all the health and
environmental aspects of nickel and nickel-containing materials. For the marketers of those materials this
means they can continue to market their products for all the good reasons they have done so in the past. But
now they will be able to do so with more confidence than ever before.
pwhiteway@nidi.org
Editor
<< Contents -- Next >>
