Impact On Health of Chlorinated Dioxins and Other Trace Organic Emissions

Abstract

The potential health effects of incineration of municipal solid waste (MSW) have been studied by the Swedish National Institute of Environmental Medicine. The greatest concern for health effects relates to the emission of PCDDs and PCDFs ("dioxins"). MSW incineration is presently estimated to be a large source for the emission of these compounds into ambient air. Based upon animal experiments, and by applying safety factors in the range 200-1000, a highest tolerable daily intake (TDI) has been estimated to be 1-5 pg kg-1 of TCDD for humans. This TDI-value has been extended to cover all the congeners of PCDDs and PCDFs by the application of the concept of "TCDD-equivalents" (Eadon et al., 1983). The high concentrations found in human breast milk and fish indicate that the TDI value may be exceeded, especially among breast-milk fed babies. If the emission can be reduced to the proposed Swedish limit value of 0.1 ng m-3n TCDD-equivalents, or less, the contribution from this source will be lowered. MSW incineration can be considered acceptable when the following aspects are taken into account: the risk estimation for TDI is conservative; there is no indication that man belongs to the most sensitive species although infants may be particularly sensitive; available studies indicate that the concept of TCDD-equivalents used overestimates the effect of mixtures of PCDDs and PCDFs; present levels in fish and human milk reflect the cumulative effect of many years of emission. Besides PCDDs and PCDFs, MSW incineration also gives rise to relatively high emissions of PAH, chlorinated PAH, phenols, benzenes and mutagenic substances under less well controlled combustion conditions. The emission of organic compounds is generally dependent on the combustion efficiency. If the combustion process is optimized and advanced flue-gas cleaning is applied so that the emission of TCDD-equivalents does not exceed 0.1 ng m-3, the emission of other organics probably will not cause significant health hazards.

Dioxin from Swedish municipal incinerators and the occurrence of cleft lip and palate malformations

“…The dominating source is the food. 3 CONCLUSION Based on the case study, exposure calculations, scrutiny of registers and study of the literature, we conclude that discharge of dioxin cannot explain the observed clusters of cleft lip and palate. The groups studied are small and small numbers are unstable from a statistical point of view.…”

“…The concentrations of dioxin caused by discharge from incinerators were judged to be below those that are harmful to man by inhalation. 3 In some cases, however, a local accumulation of cleft lip and palate has been related to refuse incineration. 4 An analysis of the incidence of the relevant type of malformation in all boroughs with incinerators was therefore considered warranted.…”

Cities as development drivers: from waste problems to energy recovery and climate change mitigation

“…That energy recovery by heat and electricity production from waste incineration and wastewater treatment as accounted for in Table 2 are associated with significant improvements in environmental protection due to technology advances over the past two to three decades. For example, Ahlborg and Victorin (1987) shows that dioxin emissions in Sweden amounted to 64 mg tonne À1 in 1985; but during the period 2007-2010 the stack emission from the waste incinerator in Malmo¨amounted to 64 ng tonne À1 waste incinerated according to Avfallsverige (2011); namely a factor 1000 reduction. For the Aalborg incinerator the range of variation in 1) but also recovery of glass, metals, paper and cardboard, and use of saved wood (saved due to recycling of paper and cardboard) as a bio-fuel that substitutes for use of fossil fuel (coal).…”