ANALYTICAL REVIEW ON INCINERATION: ECOLOGICAL ASPECTS

In the recent years (4–5 years) preoccupation with incineration as a means of destroying (!) waste has become all but a craze in Russian structures authorized to take decisions in waste management. “All but” means that in certain cities (Vladimir, Kostroma, Syktyvkar, Troitsk, Nizhny Novgorod) this idea was turned down; in 13 cities, however (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Murmansk, Kursk, Vologda, Smolensk, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Chernogolovka, Volgograd, Cherepovets, Saratov) the decisions were taken to construct waste incineration plants (WIP).

These decisions were as a rule based on several reasons:

1. A desire to find an easy solution to the problem of waste.
2. An assumption that incineration is equivalent to safe destruction.
3. A blind faith in the assurances of “authoritative” suppliers of imported WIPs that WIP emissions purification systems provide for entrapment of 95% or even 99% of harmful substances.
4. Absence of a tangible, state ecological examination procedure.

One can put aside other reasons due to their being relatively secondary. The cost effectiveness is illusory. By various estimates, waste incineration is several times more expensive than its removal to landfills (from 2 to 10 times depending on a WIP design). The estimate of Wall Street Journal as far as in 1993 was: “Incinerators are fantastically expensive in comparison with other means of waste processing”.

Whereas there is a spate of money to spend in Russia, let us not waste the time and focus on the ecological aspects of such a solution.

To sum up:

1. Not a single WIP project specifies the total composition of substances formed after incineration, i.e. the material balance of combustion. Only such balance gives reliable and trustworthy information on the composition and quantities of resultant harmful substances. Therefore assurances that the emissions purification systems are capable of entrapping 95% or 99% of harmful substances are absolutely unsupported by evidence. At best, it’s a wishful thinking. In reality, there is a growing amount of alarming information on emissions of harmful substances to the atmosphere and other media in the whereabouts of WIPs, as well as the incident rates in the most dangerous types of disease. Unfortunately, there are no grounds for proofs by contradiction.
2. Not a single WIP project compares all emissions, refuse, and residue in incineration and in removal to landfills (ranges). Even a shallow comparative analysis gives the following results: incineration results in the entire classes of extremely dangerous substances – polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), dioxins – a mixture of polychlordibenzo-para-dioxins (PCDD) and polychlordibenzofurans (PCDF) that are not formed or emitted when waste is stored in landfills (we do not consider emergency situations, but one should keep in mind that in case of emergency WIPs become even more dangerous).

   For information:

   PAH number dozens of types of which 13 are most dangerous carcinogens in itself and 5 are co-carcinogens with other substances (see table 1). WIPs are literally reactors of PAH which are emitted to the atmospheric air and partially remain in the cinder. Dioxins are substances of the group “superecotoxicants”, strongest carcinogens, mutagens, and immune system destroyers, the kings of toxicity and undisputable destroyers of everything alive. Dioxins penetrate media around WIPs, for their absorbing capacity is tremendous. Dutch research showed that even at a distance of 24 km from a WIP dioxin contamination is well detectable. The Finns necessarily (by a government program) check cow milk for PAH and dioxin content even in the northern areas, hundred of kilometers from any sources of possible emissions (see tables 2, 3).

3. Not a single WIP project considers the real environment during the routine, daily activities of the plant, but is based on the theoretical premises on the content of rubbish, technology of combustion, purification. In reality, things are worse than the project assumes, for separation of rubbish is far from complete, the technology of combustion is far from ideal, the purification system entirely fails to meet the specified results. For instance, as described by Neil Carman who worked for 12 years as WIP inspector in the U.S.: trial burns do not reflect the real state of things, for, first, only carbon tetrachloride instead of complex mixtures including polychlorinated compounds is added normally to the mixture for combustion; second, an incinerator operates during the trials in the perfected conditions (i.e. showing off); third, the so-called hysteresis is always observed, a phenomenon consisting in increased amounts of dioxin emissions after trials due to unknown reasons (almost mysterious ones); and, finally, fourth (this is already a cry from the inspector’s heart), after the trials end and inspectors leave, the operators proceed in a slipshod manner, which leads to the rapid deterioration of the incinerator’s operation with all the resulting consequences.
4. Not a single WIP project gives comparative data on the health of the WIP’s workers and the people residing in the footprint of the WIP, and other groups of people, and gives proofs that the operation of the WIP will not have a negative impact on the health of the WIP’s workers and the people residing in the whereabouts.

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Table 1

Relative carcinogenicity of various PAH*

Compound	Carcinogenic potential	Bioactivity
2-Methylnaphtalene	0	ТР
Fluoranthene	0	СС
2-Methylfluoranthene	+	C,TI
3-Methylfluoranthene	?	TI
Pyrene	0	СС
Benzo[a]anthrancene	+	TI
Chrysene	+	TI
Benzo[c]phenanthrene	+++	C
3-Methylchrysene	+	TI
5- Methylchrysene	+++	C,TI
7,12-Dimethylbenzo[a]anthracene	++++	C,TI
Benzo [b]fluoranthene	++	C,TI
Benzo [j] fluoranthene	++	C,TI
Benzo [a]pyrene	+++	C,TI
Dibenzo[a,h]anthracene	+++	C,TI
lndeno[1,2,3-cd] pyrene	+	TI
Benzo [ghi]perylene	0	CC
Pycene	+	TI

Legend:
? – uncertain; 0 – inactive; from + to ++++ - various degree of activity; СС – co-carcinogen with benzo[a]pyrene. ТР, TI – compounds capable of inducing tumors of various nature; С – total carcinogen.

* According to S.S. Yufit, Institute of Organic Chemistry named after N.D. Zelinsky, Handbook of Polycyclic Aromatik Hydrocarbons. Inc. N.Y. Basel, 1983

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Table 2

PAH DETERMINTED IN DAIRY PRODUCTS IN FINLAND *

Concentrations measured in mkg/kg

Approved method:
gas chromatography – mass-selective detector

Naphthalene
Acenaphthylene
Fluorene
Phenanthrene
Anthracene
Fluoranthene
Pyrene
Benzo[a]anthracene
Chrysene/Triphenylene
Benzo[b]fluoranthene
Benzo[k]fluoranthene
Benzo[a]pyrene
lndeno[1,2,3-c,d]pyrene
Dibenz[a,h]anthracene
Benzo[g,h,i]perylene

* Research is conducted by approved laboratories according to EN ISO/IEC 17025.

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Table 3

DIOXINS TO BE NECESSARILY
DETERMINED IN RAW MILK IN FINLAND *

Concentrations measured in pg/l (10-12 g/l)

2378-TCDF
2378-TCDD

12378-PeCDF
23478-PeCDF
12378-PeCDD

123478-HxCDF
123678-HxCDF
234678-HxCDF
123789-HxCDF

123478-HxCDD
123678-HxCDD
123789-HxCDD

1234678-HpCDF
1234789-HpCDF

1234678-HpCDD
OCDF OCDD

According to the total of the concentrations, the toxic equivalent I-TEQ is determined which should be below the upperbound.

upperbound WHO-TEQ - 26,3
mediumbound WHO-TEQ - 13,1
lowerbound WHO-TEQ - 0,00

* According to the National Institute of Public Health of Finland, the department of health in the aspect of the environment.

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ECOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

The products of WIP operation

The products of WIP operation are many times more dangerous for human health (and the biosphere generally) than waste subjected to “processing”. All waste going to incinerators (solid household waste, silt deposits, or chicken droppings) contain dangerous substances in a relatively bound state. During incineration these substances are released (such as heavy metals including mercury), and a great many additional compounds form which were not present in the initial material: hydrocarbons and PAH, their chlorinated derivates, phenols and chlorophenols, bromo- and nitric substances, PCDD, PCDF, polychlorbiphenils (PCB), acid gases НСl, sulfur dioxide gas SО₂, nitrogen oxides NO_x , СО – altogether there are currently over one hundred identified dangerous substances (in the U.S. such a list includes over 400 dangerous chemical substances). Certainly, using enormous and expensive purification systems (nowadays exceeding in cost incinerators themselves), part of them can be entrapped. But one should bear in mind that it is the least dangerous substances that are relatively easily entrapped, such as dust or volatile ashes. Entrapment of HCl, SO₂, NO_x requires liquid solutions. The better the entrapment the higher the volume of the polluted solutions, the purification and burial of which becoming a new separate problem.

The situation with dioxins is more complicated. The most “convincing” argument of WIP suppliers is that the high incineration temperature (over 1,200 degrees Centigrade) ensures the complete combustion of dioxins. If this statement is not a lie, then it surely is a wrong belief: dioxins presumably destroyed in such a way re-appear in the cold area. Besides, the higher temperature generates more nitrogen oxides. That is, very high combustion temperatures result in very high nitrogen oxide emissions. In order to considerably reduce them, one should noticeably increase the numbers of purifying solutions, which leads to, as was said earlier, to contamination of drains.

The situation with PAH is very bad – they are practically not entrapped. Therefore WIP suppliers assure that they are not formed. Alack, during incineration of such complex conglomerates as household waste, silt deposits, even provided they are preliminarily separated, this requirement being almost always ignored, and at high temperatures, PAH will necessarily form. One should only determine their compositions and quantities. The quantities are not principally important, because both PAH and PCDD, PCDF, PCB are toxic in very small concentrations. They are also very stable and have an ability to accumulate in all media, including human and animal tissues. When “normal” toxicants are dangerous in concentrations measured in milligrams, PAH are dangerous in concentrations µg(10^-6g) per 1 cubic meter of air, and dioxins in nanograms (10^-9g) in 1 cubic meter.

And, finally, cinders. WIP suppliers assure that this is the most harmless, even useful, product of WIPs. Alack, cinders are toxic. Their toxicity is composed of the toxicities of PAH, dioxins, unidentified organic toxicants and toxic materials. Only credulous people can use them in construction of projects, especially those which will interact with people and live nature, without a thorough examination.

Waste management

b>Waste incineration is extremely detrimental to the environment. The principle “burn everything that can be burned” underlying WIPs directly contradicts today’s concept of waste management, principle 3 R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). The exception can be made for dangerous for dangerous organic waste such as medical waste. Everything in waste capable of burning can be reused: paper, cardboard, wood, plastics, textiles, food refuse, either as raw materials for secondary processing, or as compost. This principle is referred also to silt deposits and chicken droppings the basic component of which is organic.

Preferring waste incineration to its reprocessing is preposterous in terms of ecological thinking. Presently there are a great number of technologies for separating household waste – from separate collection to manual or semi-automated separation at waste sorting terminals – which enable recovery of everything suitable for re-use or disposal. That which remains after that is suitable for composting. Some part may require burial. But this is the part which will harm the nature and man upon incineration much more than the total impact upon burial. However, while there exists such an insurmountable, almost mysterious desire to burn, it can be applied only to wood and its derivatives, but only by way of producing fuel elements (such as pellets). These pellets should meet the fuel standards and be burned at heat power enterprises, that is, controlled by the Law on Environmental Protection. The most ecologically responsible experts believe that wood also must be processed into pulp ethanol added to petrol in EU and US. That is, the obsessive desire to burn should be overcome in principle.

Naturally, the arrangement of such an ecological address requires effort and costs. But these costs are much lower than purchase and construction of WIPs. And the effort will be directed to an attainment of the real object which is environmental sanitation, creating therewith a tangible, ecologically positive perspective in waste management.

BASIC CONCLUSIONS

1. Application of incineration technologies for “elimination” of waste contradicts the main ecological principle of waste management: maximum bonding ensures maximum safety. When using WIPs, the situation is totally reversed: solid waste turns to gaseous waste with masses several times exceeding the original amount (due to addition of oxygen and nitrogen from air) and enters the atmosphere. Besides, solid residues (cinders) mostly become more toxic than the initial material.

A great many new dangerous substances absent in the initial material appear in the “products” of WIPs.

An incinerator is a machine producing, from relatively safe materials, toxic substances contaminating the environment. Jeff Beiley, Wall Street Journal, 11.08.93

Comment: This is so evident that it is incomprehensible why this is not perceived. Such paradoxes already occurred in the history of science. For instance, a huge world of microorganisms was discovered in the 17th century when Leeuwenhoek invented the microscope. Over the course of 200 hundred years (!) after this invention biologists, physicians, and other scientists failed to see in it any relation to human and animal diseases. Even surgeons would not wash hands (!) before surgeries. It is only in the middle of 19th century, mostly to the efforts and authority of Pasteur, that antisepsis was introduced, and the horrifying death rates in hospitals started to recede. Then scientifically justified remedies for diseases began to appear: inoculations, antibiotics, etc. But the price of the ignorance two centuries long was millions of lives.

Under our eyes the story repeated itself with radioactivity. First, people including scientists did not recognize the danger of invisible and inaudible rays. It required Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the appalling consequences of nuclear tests to comprehend the threat. And, finally, the Chernobyl disaster showed that contamination linked with aerial transfer has no bounds.

2. Operation of WIPs in various parts of the world has created and aggravated the real threat to the biosphere and human health. This is evidenced by numerous, through fragmentary, data of research in various countries.

The increased content of dioxins was discovered in tissues of people living in WIP footprints in Great Britain, Spain, and Japan. In 1994 EPA conducted a general investigation of all WIPs in the U.S. – 166 plants. 12 WIPs were inspected in detail, but they all showed an extremely high level of emissions, which in turn explains the severe contamination of the U.S, territory with dioxins. The contamination of food in America is so high that it poses a threat to the national health, according to EPA. The recently conducted research showed that in the United Kingdom WIPs continue to release 30% - 50% of the total amount of dioxins into the atmosphere, whereas in Belgium WIPs are their main source. In the Netherlands, after introduction of the European Community’s Norms (HEC), 4 plants out of 12 were shut down. According to Greenpeace, Sweden’s WIP workers have increased death rates from lung cancer (3,5 times), esophagus cancer (1.5 times), ulcer cancer (2.8 times). The examination of health of people residing in WIP footprint in Italy detected the probability of death for lung cancer increased 6.7 times. The examination of 14 mln people residing within 7.4 km to 72 km of WIPs in the U.K. recorded a 37% increase in liver cancer death rate, probability of children’s death caused by cancer increased twice. The examination of people residing in the vicinity of two WIPs in Belgium showed a 26% increase in probability of congenital malformations.

The urgency of the situation which befallen to the countries which have chosen waste incineration can be clearly seen in the example of an expert evaluation of the dynamics of contaminated breast milk in breast-feeding mothers in the Netherlands. The daily inflow of dioxins with breast milk reduced from 193 pkg/kg of the infant’s weight in 1989 to 68 pkg/kg in 1996. This was estimated as a great achievement of the EC in the sphere of human and environmental protection from dioxins. Now many people understand that the most correct way is to compare the quantities of dioxins and other contaminants contained in breast milk, after putting WIPs into operation and before their construction.

In the U.S. the incidence rate of respiratory cancer increased by 10.5% from 2002 to 2005. By 2005 deaths caused by cancers amounted to 23.2% in the U.S., 29.5% in Canada, 31.7% in Japan, of the total death counts.

The analysis of the WHO data shows that cancer incidence rates are well correlated with the quantities of WIPs. Thus, the countries which started construction of WIPs long ago have had a high and steadily growing cancer incidence rates over the recent years. These are Austria, Germany, U.K., Italy, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, France, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland. In all these countries the sickness rates in the 1990s surpassed 400 per 100,000 pers. and continue to grow. On the average, by 2005 in western European countries the disease incidence approached the shocking value of 500 (Pic. 1). At that, in the countries with the highest numbers of operating WIPs the cancer rates exceeded 500 per 100,000 pers.: Germany (58 WIPs), Denmark (32), Finland (26), Norway (21), Sweden (28), Switzerland (29). In Switzerland, with its small territory, the cancer rates exceeded 1,200 (!) per 100,000 pers. The proof of the threatening trans-border influence of WIPs is a severe growth of cancer rates in countries not operating WIPs but adjacent to the states having operating plants: Hungary, Romania, Luxemburg, Bulgaria, Serbia. In eastern European countries, especially in C.I.S. states which do not construct WIPs or began such construction recently, the situation is still not so threatening as in western European countries where prevalence of cancer amounted to 3.6% by 2005 (Pic. 2) of the entire population (compared to 1.7% in 1980) and took the second place among death causes (after cardiovascular causes). If decisive action is not taken in the nearest years, there are all indicators that within 10 – 15 years cancer incidence may grow to epidemic rates.

In Moscow and St. Petersburg, the cities where WIPs operate (in St. Petersburg this is the plant incinerating silt deposits), the contribution of the incineration technologies into contamination of the environment is noticeable even against the background of high contamination rates caused by motor vehicles. The dynamics of disease among people show the excelling growth in such classes of disease as tumors, diseases of the endocrine system, circulation system, respiratory organs, digestion organs (especially of the pancreas). Congenital malformations increase in numbers. Considering a high cumulative ability of the most dangerous contaminations and the effect of sub-small doses recently discovered by biochemistry in recent years, the tentative tendency is most severely alarming.

Pic.1. Cancer incidence rate, per 100,000 pers

Pic.2. Cancer prevalence, % of entire population

The same story, but the mistakes are learned… We have the same technology of public brainwashing as in the U.S. in the beginning of the 1980s. Mass media launched the large-scale brainwashing campaign drumming the two simple ideas into people’s minds. First, America is choking with garbage, the garbage crisis has come, and life will collapse unless the crisis is overcome. Second, landfills are seats of disasters and illness, only incineration of garbage can save the American people. The two decades of operation of WIPs in the U.S., as well as the activities of WIPs in Europe and Japan have given convincing proofs that the searching for the solution to the garbage problem by way of its incineration is fundamentally erroneous. Instead of the old problem several new ones have appeared – contamination of all media (air, waters, soils) by newly formed, extremely dangerous products of combustion; growth of diseases in the most dangerous classes of disease (cancer, congenital malfunctions, respiratory); serious economic changes in the budgets for costs of environmental protection; a noticeable retardation in the development of technologies of waste recycling and disposal. Additionally, the experience of operating WIPs showed what we certainly did not know when deciding to construct them: emissions from WIPs are commensurable in volumes to emissions from the main air contaminant, motor vehicles, of a much more varied composition and more dangerous. I.e., WIPs have essentially negated the titanic efforts taken to reduce toxicity of automobile exhausts in the places where WIPs operate. A more difficult situation can be envisaged for Russia where emissions of harmful substances of one vehicle unit greatly exceed the standards of the average vehicle in Europe.

It should be noted that while the problem of atmospheric contamination with vehicle emissions have arisen naturally, as a side effect of the technical progress, the problem of air contamination with emissions from waste incineration was the result of the wrong choice, which in its turn resulted from public excitement, insufficient scientific justification, and the desire to solve a complex problem easily.

Currently America and Europe have begun to sober up slowly. Construction of new WIPs has almost stopped, their numbers begin to reduce, in many states of the U.S. and Canada the process for prohibiting construction of WIPs is underway. In the U.S. 97 WIPs were shut down by 2007 out of 186 WIPs active in 1990, 89 continued to operate. The producers of WIPs, however, plan to retain or even increase the production volumes due to construction of WIPs in South Asia and Eastern Europe (i.e. in our territory). Moreover, they assume in advance that the actual requirements to emissions there are lower than in Europe and the U.S., which will allow reductions of the production costs. Ecologically, WIPs are the source of ecological threat of a higher level than the waste entering WIPs.

Russia has a chance, relying on the experience of foreign countries, to escape the trap of WIPs. The air is our common vital medium, one for everybody. This is a medium without an alternative, with no personal privileges. Everybody should think about whether other high aims including a solution to the rubbish problem are worthy of sacrificing aerial environment even in smallest amounts. Everyone who has doubts about the presented facts and reasons can engage in an independent search for confirmations or denials without relying on anyone’s authoritative opinion and come to their own conclusion. The problem is too serious, the risks too high, the price can be utterly inadmissible, so one just ought not to simply let things take their course, relying on the “competent” assurances.

Materials used in the review:

1. The complete version of Incineration Directive, 1989.
2. EC Directive 75/442/ЕЕС
3. Maximum Permissible Concentrations of Chemical Substances in the Environment. Handbook edited by Krotov Yu.A., SPb, 2000.
4. Combustion. Physical and Chemical Aspects, Simulation, Experiments, Formation of Contaminants. J. Warnatz, U. Maas, R.W. Dibble, Moscow, transl. 2003.
5. Waste Incineration Plants – a Danger for Russia, Yufit S.S., Institute of Organic Chemistry named after N.D. Zelinsky, Russian Academy of Sciences, Article, 2008.
6. WHO database ( htpp// data.euro.who.int/hfadb/)
7. Materials of periodicals and released at conferences and seminars 2005-2008.

S.M. Gordyshevsky,
St. Petersburg Ecological Union, May 2008.