Estimating Particulate Exposure from Modern Municipal Waste Incinerators in Great Britain

Abstract

Municipal Waste Incineration (MWI) is regulated through the European Union Directive on Industrial Emissions (IED), but there is ongoing public concern regarding potential hazards to health. Using dispersion modeling, we estimated spatial variability in PM10 concentrations arising from MWIs at postcodes (average 12 households) within 10 km of MWIs in Great Britain (GB) in 2003–2010. We also investigated change points in PM10 emissions in relation to introduction of EU Waste Incineration Directive (EU-WID) (subsequently transposed into IED) and correlations of PM10 with SO2, NOx, heavy metals, polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins/furan (PCDD/F), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) and polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) emissions. Yearly average modeled PM10 concentrations were 1.00 × 10–5 to 5.53 × 10–2 μg m–3, a small contribution to ambient background levels which were typically 6.59–2.68 × 101 μg m–3, 3–5 orders of magnitude higher. While low, concentration surfaces are likely to represent a spatial proxy of other relevant pollutants. There were statistically significant correlations between PM10 and heavy metal compounds (other heavy metals (r = 0.43, p = <0.001)), PAHs (r = 0.20, p = 0.050), and PCBs (r = 0.19, p = 0.022). No clear change points were detected following EU-WID implementation, possibly as incinerators were operating to EU-WID standards before the implementation date. Results will be used in an epidemiological analysis examining potential associations between MWIs and health outcomes.

Safely recovering value from plastic waste in the Global South: Opportunities and challenges for circular economy and plastic pollution mitigation

“…Since then, dioxins from waste combustion have been almost entirely generated by small waste fires, accidental fires, and on November the 5 th ('bonfire night', a traditional celebration during which large fires are burned all over the UK). Several studies indicate that the risk to human health from incineration is likely to be minimal (Douglas et al, 2017;Freni-Sterrantino et al, 2019;Ghosh et al, 2019) Although some nonnegligible negative health outcomes are highlighted in systematic reviews by Tait et al (2019) and Ashworth et al (2014), the evidence reviewed in both studies was temporally various, and some studies were based on decades old incinerators that do not comply with current best available techniques.…”

The myth and the reality of energy recovery from municipal solid waste

“…Incineration leads to emissions of metals like mercury [108] and organics like dioxins [18,84,109,166] which are highly toxic. They not only put the people living in the vicinity of incinerators to great risk [28,110] but also cause dispersion of these pollutants far and wide [54]. Elevated levels of these pollutants and their adverse effect on human health are being reported with increasing frequency [107,112,156,162,189,208].…”

Prerequisites for Public Acceptance of Waste-to-Energy Plants: Evidence from Germany and Indonesia

“…The high APC standard of German WtE plants is illustrated by comparing data from the UK [8]. In 14 out of 22 MWIs operating between 2003 and 2010, PM10 emissions exceeding the EU limit of 10 mg/Nm 3 (daily average) were found (but usually <20 mg/Nm 3 ).…”

“…The maximum value was 85 mg PM10/Nm 3 , followed by 66 (twice) and 54 mg PM10/Nm 3 . The authors of [8] refer to PM10 rather than the total suspended particulates (total dust) as size fraction studies revealed that all particulate incinerator emissions are less than 10 µm in diameter. The average value measured at Germany's MSWI plants was 1 mg PM10/Nm 3 until 2005.…”