Open refuse burning

[ttweed@wildrockies.org (Tony Tweedale)]

Paul Lemieux, of the U.S. EPA's Office of Research & Development wrote:
'Evaluation of Emissions from the Open Burning of Household Wastes n
Barrels. Vol 1. Technical Report'  EPA-600/R-97-134a.  I don't believe it
discusses dispersion modelling, but since it's only vol. 1 .... (also, this
seems like a standard situatin to plug into a dispersion model).  The EPA's
main page (www.epa.gov) has a search engine for EPA employee's address, tel
& email contact info, and you migh try their main search engine to see if
the report is available.  I have a 6 pg summary of it (unless it's the
whole report), which looks like it came from a .pdf file I would have
downloaded, if I could remember.  It's an excellent report--hard data
showing that a kg of barrel burned waste from a recycler emits much more
dioxins than a kg from a non-recycler; presumably (as the report says)
because the recycler's waste is highly enriched in PVC & PVDC (this
strongly refutes the industrie's claim that PVC burning doesn't emit much
dioxins).  It also finds that emissions of several pollutants for the waste
of one family is equivalent to the emissions from a 200 tpd incinerator w/
all its a.p. controls.  good luck, and focus on phasing out/boycottng, PVC
instead of just persuading people not to burn their waste (even as several
major uses of chlorine are shrinking, the massive growth in the PVC segment
means that chlorine production overall keeps growing, and quite rapidly.
Greenpeace first notified this list of the above report and its importance;
I wouldn't be suprised if local or European GP offices have other hard data
on barrel burning organo-chlorine emissions.
---

>I'm dealing with dispersion modelling; I'd like to model the exposure to
>dioxin coming from open burning of waste - this happens very often in
>our rural areas - people are burning not only garden refuse, but also
>garbage - paper, plastics, tires, textile, etc., in order to reduce the
>amount of money spent for municipal trash collection service.
>
>Does anybody know about any articles, research done or any information
>associated with open refuse burning?
>
>Thanks for help,
>                                                                    Jana
>Krajcovicova
>
>--
>Jana Krajcovicova
>
>SHMU - Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute
>Jeseniova 17
>833 15 Bratislava, Slovak Republic
>Tel: 421 7 59415416
>Jana.Krajcovicova@mail.shmu.sk
>

Tony Tweedale

Causality is a concept not subject to empirical demonstration. -David Hume
(1711-'76)

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