=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #90
—August 15, 1988—
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
==========
The Back issues and Index are available
here.
The official RACHEL archive is here.
It’s updated constantly.
To subscribe, send E-mail to rachel-weekly-
request@world.std.com
with the single word SUBSCRIBE in the message. It’s free.
===Previous issue==========================================Next issue===
LEACHATE FROM MUNICIPAL DUMPS HAS SAME TOXICITY AS LEACHATE FROM
HAZARDOUS WASTE DUMPS.
In a new study, researchers at Texas A&M University have compared
leachate from municipal landfills with leachate from hazardous
waste landfills and they report, “…There is ample evidence that
the municipal waste landfill leachates contain toxic chemicals in
sufficient concentration to be potentially as harmful as leachate
from industrial waste landfills.” Specifically, the Texas
researchers compared leachate from several municipal landfills
with leachate from the notorious Love Canal landfill (and other
hazardous waste landfills, such as Kin-Buc in Edison, NJ) and
they found the leachates similar in their cancer-causing
potential.
Leachate is the liquid that is produced when rain falls on a
landfill, sinks into the wastes, and picks up chemicals as it
seeps downward. Industries creating “hazardous wastes” (as
legally defined under federal law) may not send those wastes to
municipal landfills, but must instead send them to special
hazardous waste landfills.
When a new municipal landfill is proposed, advocates of the
project always emphasize that “no hazardous wastes will enter
this landfill.” The Texas study shows that even though municipal
landfills may not legally receive “hazardous” wastes, the
leachate they produce is as dangerous as the leachate from
hazardous waste landfills.
Dr. Kirk Brown and Dr. K.C. Donnelly at Texas A&M, authors of
the new study, examined data on the composition of leachate from
58 landfills. The data they reviewed showed 113 different toxic
chemicals in leachate from municipal landfills and 72 toxic
chemicals in leachate from hazardous waste landfills. The
abundance of toxics in municipal landfills probably occurs
because the entire spectrum of consumer products ends up in
municipal landfills, whereas hazardous waste landfills serve a
limited number of industries within a region.
The actual source of the toxic chemicals in municipal landfills
is not known precisely. Under federal law (RCRA Subtitle C) each
“small quantity generator” can send up to 2640 pounds per year of
legally-hazardous chemicals to municipal landfills. In 1980, the
EPA [U.S. Environmental Protection Agency] estimated that 600,000
tons per year of legally-hazardous wastes were going to municipal
dumps from 695,000 “small quantity generators.”
Illegal dumping may be another source; illegal dumping is
impossible to prevent entirely because someone bringing in a
truckload of wastes may hide a few gallons, or a few barrels, of
hazardous chemicals in the middle of the truckload. The higher
the price of legal disposal, the more incentive people have to
dump illegally. However, the most likely source of most of the
toxic materials in municipal landfills is legally-disposed
household products like paint solvents, oils, cleaning compounds,
degreasing compounds, and pesticides. “In addition, the final
depository of most of the products of our modern industrial
society is the municipal waste landfill where the paints,
plastics, and pharmaceuticals dissolve and degrade in the acidic
anaerobic [oxygen-free] environment, thereby, releasing
degradation products which may be even more toxic than the
products from which they originated,” say Brown and Donnelly.
The findings of Brown and Donnelly will come as no surprise to
many researchers who have known for years that municipal leachate
is as toxic as the leachate from industrial landfills. For
example, in an article entitled, “APPLICATION OF HYDROGEOLOGY TO
THE SELECTION OF REFUSE DISPOSAL SITES,” Ronald A. Landon
reported in 1969 in the JOURNAL OF GROUND WATER, Vol. 7
(Nov.-Dec., 1969), pgs. 9-13, that “Leachate at its source, that
is within the landfill, has concentrations and characteristics of
many industrial wastes; and in many instances would be better
treated as such a waste.” (pg. 12)
What Brown and Donnelly have contributed is a quantitative
analysis of the toxicity and the carcinogenic potential of
leachates from the two types of landfills.
Brown and Donnelly conclude, “The risk calculations based on
suspect carcinogens… indicate that the estimated carcinogenic
potency for the leachate from some municipal landfills may be
similar to the carcinogenic potency of the leachate from the Love
Canal landfill.”
In industrial landfill leachate, 32 chemicals cause cancer; 10
cause birth defects, and 21 cause genetic damage; in municipal
landfill leachate, 32 chemicals cause cancer, 13 cause birth
defects, and 22 cause genetic damage.
The new study, “An Estimation of the Risk Associated with the
Organic Constituents of Hazardous and Municipal Waste Landfill
Leachates,” appears in the journal, HAZARDOUS WASTES AND
HAZARDOUS MATERIALS, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pgs. 1-30.
Request a free reprint from Dr. Kirk Brown, Soil and Crop
Sciences Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
77843. Phone (409) 845-5201.
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: leachate; leaks; toxicity; hazardous waste
industry; msw; texas a&m; landfilling; cancer; love canal;
kin-buc landfill; studies; findings; household hazardous wastes;
kirk brown; k.c. donnelly; rcra; epa; illegal dumping; haulers;
risk assessment; birth defects; developmental disorders;