Up in smoke: setting fire to the waste problem

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), July, 1993 by Christy Law

Toxins dispersed into the air, soil, and water as a by-product of incineration make this method of disposal extremely hazardous.

America is being buried in garbage. Government, industry, and environmentalists are struggling with a monumental waste problem, but safe and cost-effective solutions are hard to find. The dilemma is made all the more difficult because it includes dangerous toxic and radioactive waste. Given the serious health effects related to hazardous waste and its disposal, the question of how to deal with toxic materials is of concern to everyone, not just government and industry officials.

For decades, burying the waste seemed like the logical solution. From municipal dumps to massive underground storage tanks for radioactive material from the nation's nuclear weapons facilities, waste has been buried or pumped into the ground on a massive scale. Once out of sight, most people thought it could be put out of mind. That, however, is not the case. The Love Canal disaster brought home to Americans that toxic waste was a serious issue. Leakage from landfills has allowed dangerous chemicals to contaminate the soil and seep into groundwater, endangering municipal water supplies and requiring multi-billion-dollar cleanup efforts.

In recognition of the problems caused by years of reckless waste disposal, Congress passed the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) in 1976. Gone are the days of companies disposing of waste in the city dump or their backyard. They now hire waste management firms to handle it.

The rapid growth of lucrative waste management corporations has allowed investment in costly technologies necessary to dispose of such material in accordance with RCRA regulations. A small number of corporations now control the lion's share of the waste management business and thus hold great influence with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As a matter of policy, the EPA now appears to have chosen incineration as the waste disposal option of choice.

Incineration is the controlled burning of waste and has become the most favored option because it provides a cost-effective manner of disposal. Incinerators are expensive, but once on-line can produce lucrative profits for the builders and operators of the facility. They burn the waste and, to the average person, it appears to have disappeared. In addition, resource recovery incinerators produce electricity from the incineration process and provide another financial incentive for waste disposal firms to use such technology.

As with landfills, there is more than meets the eye with the "incineration solution." Incinerators are designed to burn hazardous or municipal solid waste at extremely high temperatures to destroy, or at least reduce, the toxic components. The reality is that burning does not destroy the waste, but merely changes its form.

In addition, the process creates new toxic by-products. Incineration of even relatively benign household garbage creates dangerous toxins. These new toxins and waste products, which never are burned completely - despite even the most effective pollution control devices - escape up the smokestacks in the form of air emissions and fly ash, settling on land and surface water or remain in the machine as ash residue, which then must be landfilled.

Health effects of incineration

by-products

The toxic by-products of incineration have profound negative impacts on human health and the environment. The following are among the most dangerous:

Dioxins are created by a number of industrial processes such as the manufacture of paper and incineration of household garbage. Dioxin is the active chemical compound found in Agent Orange, one of the defoliants used during the Vietnam War. Military personnel exposed to it have demonstrated a cancer rate two times greater than normal. Dioxins are so toxic that a safe level of exposure can not be determined. Moreover, a 1987 EPA draft study states that exposure to dioxin can "affect the skin, the liver, the nervous system, and the immune system of humans and animals." Additionally troubling, the EPA states that dioxin "is quite potent compared to other known carcinogens. . . ." Dioxin exposure also is linked to impaired immune systems.

Heavy metals include lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury. These commonly are found in hazardous waste, as well as in batteries, inks, paints, and household and industrial refuse. Although these are incinerated along with the rest of the garbage, burning never can destroy the heavy metals. Human exposure to heavy metals can cause birth defects, nervous system damage, and cancer. The controversy about lead paint in public housing - and its deleterious effects, including severe learning disabilities in children - has added fuel to the public outcry concerning heavy metals.

PCBs are a family of chemicals used in coolants and lubricants. The manufacture of PCBs was stopped in the U.S. in 1977 because of evidence that they accumulate in the environment and pose danger to the health of animals and humans. Products containing PCBs are considered to be hazardous waste and often are treated by incineration. However, the technology does not destroy the PCBs - it merely reduces and diffuses them.