A HEALTH RISK COMPARISON OF LANDFILL DISPOSAL AND WASTE-TO-ENERGY (WTE) TREATMENT OF MUNICIPAL SOLID WASTES IN NEW YORK CITY (NYC)

Waste is an inevitable byproduct of our economy and must be managed in an environmentally sound and health protective manner. Few studies have compared and evaluated the health risks of landfills and waste combustion. Furthermore, experts continue to debate whether landfill disposal or waste combustion poses less risk to human health and the environment. As most of New York City’s (NYC) municipal solid wastes are sent to landfills and some to waste-to-energy (WTE) facilities, it is of interest to assess the health risks of these two waste management options. The present study attempts to compare the inhalation health risks of landfill disposal and WTE combustion in a NYC setting using principles of risk assessment and on the basis of a critical review of the literature on the respective emissions of these two methods. In addition to landfill and WTE combustor emissions, this study considers the health impacts from transporting wastes to waste transfer stations (WTS) and landfills. Both of these technologies have been improved in the last twenty years, landfills by means of the EPA Subtitle D rules and WTE facilities through the implementation of EPA Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards. Therefore, this study assumes the use of modern landfills and WTE combustors. In addition to the health impacts from landfill and WTE combustor emissions, this study also considers the impacts from waste-transfer stations for landfill disposal and truck transportation of both MSW and WTE ash to landfills. The overall individual non-cancer and cancer risks for landfill disposal and WTE combustion were 1.18E+01, 4.14E-05, 2.30E+00, and 8.33E-06, respectively. Impacts from truck transportation were found to be an important contributor to increased health risk. These results suggest that WTE combustion may pose less health impacts than landfill disposal and provide an initial estimation of the relative inhalation health risks from landfill disposal and WTE combustion. Further investigation is needed to validate or modify the findings of this study.

[1]  Morton A. Barlaz,et al.  Life-cycle inventory of a modern municipal solid waste landfill , 1999 .

[2]  Ronald E. Hester,et al.  Health effects and landfill sites , 2002 .

[3]  Michigan.,et al.  Toxicological profile for dichloropropenes , 2008 .

[4]  W. F. Sandusky,et al.  Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States , 1987 .

[5]  A. Ledin,et al.  Present and Long-Term Composition of MSW Landfill Leachate: A Review , 2002 .

[6]  Kathryn E. Kelly,et al.  Health Risk Assessment of Hazardous Waste Incinerator Stack Emissions , 1986 .

[7]  G. Charnley,et al.  Human exposure to dioxins from food, 1999-2002. , 2005, Food and chemical toxicology : an international journal published for the British Industrial Biological Research Association.

[8]  J Wakefield,et al.  Risk of adverse birth outcomes in populations living near landfill sites , 2001, BMJ : British Medical Journal.

[9]  Lesley Rushton,et al.  Health hazards and waste management. , 2003, British medical bulletin.

[10]  Toni Gladding,et al.  Review of Environmental and Health Effects of Waste Management: Municipal Solid Waste and Similar Wastes , 2004 .

[11]  Ishrat Chaudhuri,et al.  Multiple Pathway Health Risk Assessment and Multimedia Environmental Monitoring Programs for a Municipal Waste Resource Recovery Facility in Maryland , 2004 .

[12]  D. Raha,et al.  Toxicological screening of chemical emissions from municipal solid waste landfills. application of a predictive framework to a state‐of‐the‐art facility , 1997 .

[13]  Arnold Schecter,et al.  Polybrominated Diphenyl Ether Flame Retardants in the U.S. Population: Current Levels, Temporal Trends, and Comparison With Dioxins, Dibenzofurans, and Polychlorinated Biphenyls , 2005, Journal of occupational and environmental medicine.

[14]  W. T. Davis,et al.  Air Pollution: Its Origin and Control , 1976 .

[15]  C. Yaws.  Chemical properties handbook , 1999 .

[16]  Jia-Yeong Ku,et al.  Spatial and Temporal Variation in the Mixing Depth over the Northeastern United States during the Summer of 1995 , 1999 .

[17]  M. Lazaridis,et al.  Quantification of landfill emissions to air: a case study of the Ano Liosia landfill site in the greater Athens area , 2005, Waste management & research : the journal of the International Solid Wastes and Public Cleansing Association, ISWA.

[18]  P. Deriziotis,et al.  Substance and Perceptions of Environmental Impacts of Dioxin Emissions: An Interim Report , 2003 .

[19]  R. Burnett,et al.  Lung cancer, cardiopulmonary mortality, and long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution. , 2002, JAMA.

[20]  L. Tuxen,et al.  Integrated risk information system (IRIS) , 1990 .

[21]  D. Stallknecht.  FACT SHEET , 2006 .

[22]  Christopher Snary,et al.  Health Risk Assessment for Planned Waste Incinerators: Getting the Right Science and the Science Right , 2002, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[23]  L. Floridi,et al.  Section II , 1996 .

[24]  Nickolas J. Themelis,et al.  The Case for WTE as a Renewable Source of Energy , 2004 .

[25]  Nickolas J. Themelis.  Integrated Management of Solid Wastes for New York City , 2002 .