=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #198
—September 12, 1990—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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SCIENTISTS SUSPECT POISONING OF FISH
BY MERCURY EMISSIONS FROM INCINERATORS.
Incineration of municipal solid waste (msw) is releasing massive
amounts of the potent neurotoxin, mercury, into the air,
according to a study published last week by scientists Robert
Collins and Henry S. Cole of Clean Water Action’s Research and
Technical Center in Washington, DC. Garbage burners now operating
in 40 states are releasing an estimated total of 74,356 pounds of
mercury into the air each year, according to Collins and Cole;
garbage burners on the drawing boards would release an additional
52,339 pounds into the air annually when they start operating,
for a total of 126,695 pounds per year. This makes garbage
burning the second largest source of mercury entering the
atmosphere, after coal-burning power plants, which put an
estimated 162,000 pounds per year into the air.
Even at very low exposures, mercury can damage the human central
nervous system, impair mental development, and damage kidneys.
Mercury–the familiar “quicksilver” metal used in many
thermometers–is contained in many household products, including
batteries, paints, dyes, electric and electronic devices (silent
light switches, for example), fluorescent lights, plastics,
pharmaceuticals, pesticides, pastes, glues, adhesives and other
items. When these items are landfilled, their mercury escapes
slowly into the soil and groundwater, contaminating the local
environment. However, burning any of these items turns their
mercury into a gaseous vapor which escapes from the smoke stack
and thus contaminates an area extending many miles from the
incinerator stack. As the airborne mercury cools off, it turns
back into a solid form and settles to earth where it begins to
interact with living organisms. Some of the mercury is held for a
time in the soil, but eventually it moves with rainwater toward
the nearest stream, river, or lake. Once in an aquatic
environment, the mercury moves into the food chain or food web,
concentrating as it goes. It starts by entering plankton–the
smallest, floating plants–and ends up contaminating the largest
fish, which often become so toxic that they are dangerous for
humans to eat. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set one
part per million (1 ppm) as the “action level” for mercury in
fish. Fish containing 1 ppm or more of mercury can be banned from
interstate commerce and people are warned against eating any of
it. Many states issue warnings not to eat fish containing more
than 0.5 ppm.
At least 20 states currently have one or more bodies of water in
which excessive mercury has been identified and where warnings
have been issued to restrict or avoid fish consumption because of
a human health hazard from mercury contamination of the fish.
Collins and Cole surveyed states with fish advisories and found a
suspicious pattern: of the 16 states burning the largest amounts
of garbage, 12 have fish advisories for mercury. The sixteen
biggest garbage burning states [with their incinerator mercury
emissions in pounds listed inside parentheses, and an asterisk
indicating those that have issued fish advisories for mercury
contamination] are: *Massachusetts (10,605); *New York (9,698);
*Florida (8,203); Ohio (6,132); Maryland (4,433); *Connecticut
(3,956); Michigan (3,831); *Virginia (3,449); Maine (2,466);
Indiana (1,771); *Tennessee (1,699); *Minnesota (1,694);
Pennsylvania (1,429); *Wisconsin (1,360); California (1,324);
*Oklahoma (1,139).
Fifteen to 20 years ago, industry (chemicals and allied products;
petroleum refining; copper and lead smelters; and instrument and
electronics manufacture) were much larger sources of mercury air
emissions than either incinerators or coal-burning power plants,
with total air emissions of 262,298 pounds in 1973. In the past
two decades, these industries have evidently reduced their
mercury emissions substantially (according to data industry
reported to EPA in 1988 under the federal Community Right to Know
law) while power plant emissions have increased 80% since 1980.
However, the fastest-growing source of mercury emissions in the
past decade has been garbage burners, which increased their
mercury air emissions 122% between 1979 and 1989.
The air pollution control devices used on most U.S. garbage
incinerators (called electrostatic precipitators) do not capture
mercury at all; mercury slips right by them and out the stack.
More modern pollution control equipment for garbage burners
combines dry lime scrubbers (which spray crushed lime into the
exhaust gas to neutralize hydrochloric acid) followed by a fabric
(baghouse) filter (essentially a huge vacuum cleaner bag). EPA
(U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has evaluated the ability
of these modern systems to control mercury emissions and has
found inconsistent results. EPA’s proposed regulations of garbage
burners contain the following statement:
“Available data indicate wide variation in mercury collection
efficiency and emission rates, even for MWC [municipal waste
combustors] with GCP [good combustion practices] and SD/FF [spray
dry scrubber/fabric filter (baghouse)] controls. The reasons for
this variability and the mechanisms affecting mercury emissions
and collection are not well understood. Therefore, an emission
limit cannot be specified at this time.”
In short, the designers, operators and regulators of garbage
burners do not understand the behavior of the machines they
design, operate and regulate, at least so far as mercury
emissions are concerned. It is interesting to recall that Dr.
Barry Commoner recently reviewed the history of dioxin emissions
from garbage burners and showed that the incinerator industry
spent a decade denying that their machines create dioxin in the
combustion process. After a decade of keeping their heads in the
sand like ostriches, they had to admit that their original
understanding of their machines was simply wrong. Commoner
concluded, “Clearly, trash-burning incinerators have serious
environmental problems. But they reveal a failing that is even
worse: the incinerator industry has been building these devices
without fully understanding how they operate, at least with
respect to their impact on the environment.” (Commoner, MAKING
PEACE WITH THE PLANET [NY: Pantheon Books, 1990], pg. 120.) In
sum, both the mercury and the dioxin situations indicate that the
people who design, operate, and regulate garbage burners have
been conducting a massive experiment without fully understanding
the conditions of the experiment or its consequences, exposing
large segments of the American public to toxic effluents,
claiming all the while to know precisely what they are doing. It
is a stark lesson worth remembering the next time a “state of the
art” facility (of any kind) is proposed for your community. Lois
Gibbs of the Citizens’ Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste has
said, “State of the art really just means industry’s latest
experiment.” The recent history of the garbage burning industry
seems to confirm Ms. Gibbs’s maxim. Air pollution control devices
that capture mercury exist; they are simply not used in the U.S.
because government has not required garbage burners to use them.
(It is worth noting that the National Resource Recovery
Association, which promotes incineration, is a subsidiary of the
U.S. Conference of Mayors, so the relationship of this industry
to government is cosier than most.) Recently, all 11 solid waste
incinerators in the Netherlands have been required to install
activated carbon filters on their smoke stacks, to capture
mercury effectively.
Of course capturing mercury from the smoke stack simply puts it
into the ash, which must be landfilled somewhere. The mercury
will then make its way into the local environment around the
landfill, sooner or later. Ultimately, the only real solution to
the problem of mercury emissions from incinerators is to stop
using incinerators for solid waste management, or to stop
manufacturers from putting toxic mercury into household products,
or both.
Get: Robert Collins and Henry S. Cole, MERCURY RISING: GOVERNMENT
IGNORES THE THREAT OF MERCURY FROM MUNICIPAL WASTE INCINERATORS
(Washington, DC: Clean Water Action Research and Technical Center
[1320 18th St., NW, Washington, DC 20036; phone (202) 457-1286,
ext. 128], September, 1990. 44 pgs. $7.50 for citizen activists;
$50.00 for for-profit groups.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: msw; mercury; robert collins; henry cole;
clean water action; incineration; health effects; nervous system
disorders; mental illnesses; kidney disorders; household
hazardous wastes; food; diet; chemical industry; air pollution;
air quality; water pollution; waste treatment technologies;
scrubbers; studies; barry commoner; msw; waste disposal industry;
ash; toxic waste;