ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT AND IMPACT ASSESSMENT ACROSS A PHYSICAL-CHEMICAL LABORATORY THROUGH FMEA

Environmental management practices are needed across organizations from different sizes and economic sectors. This includes the education institutions, which develop polluting activities, such as physical-chemical laboratories, which are used in teaching, research and extension activities. An understanding of environmental aspects and establishment of environmental control measures across the laboratory are crucial for environmental management. The assessment of the environmental aspect and impact contributes to this performance. Thus, this paper aims to assess the environmental aspect and impact of a physical-chemical laboratory of the federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology, campus Natal, and to propose practices to control them. For that, a case study was carried out focusing on the assessment of environmental aspect and impact through the application of the Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) method. FMEA takes into considerations criteria like severity, probability and detection. The significant environmental aspects identified were associated with the outputs of laboratory activities, such as hazardous solid waste, non-hazardous effluent and hazardous effluent. Practices to control the significant environmental aspects were proposed, considering the needs, the organizational structure and the financial resources. Overall, key enabler for the implementation of the practices was the low cost of implementation, leading to a better control of the environmental aspect.