Managing Managing Mountains of UK Waste Called Minor Health Threat

LONDON, United Kingdom, May 7, 2004 (ENS) - Present practices for managing municipal waste have at most a minor effect on human health and the environment when compared with everyday activities, concludes a review of the environmental and health effects of waste management commissioned by the Blair Government and made public Thursday. But Friends of the Earth said the report does little to increase confidence in the government's waste strategy and warned that it should not be used to justify more waste incineration.

The review found no evidence to suggest that the current generation of municipal solid waste incinerators is likely to have an effect on human health. Cancer, respiratory diseases and birth defects were all considered, and no evidence was found for a link between the incidence of the disease and the current generation of incinerators.

Team leader Professor Roy Harrison is deputy chairman of the Expert Panel on Air Quality Standards in the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions. (Photo courtesy University of Birmingham)

British Environment Minister Elliot Morley said, ""I am particularly encouraged by the report's conclusion that, on the evidence from studies so far, the treatment of municipal waste has at most a minor effect on health in this country particularly when compared with other health risks associated with ordinary day-to-day living."

"Our advice is that the report gives us sufficient confidence in our current policies for local authorities to press ahead urgently with the task of approving planning applications for new waste management facilities in line with the hierarchy of waste disposal with minimization at the top and landfill at the bottom," Morley said.

But Friends of the Earth's waste campaigner Anna Watson has less confidence in the government's waste strategy. "It fails to adequately consider the environmental benefits of recycling, or the wider global environmental impacts of the way we manage our waste, and must not be used as a green light for increased incineration," she said.

Another load of rubbish awaits disposal (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)

Compared with other waste management technologies, incineration produces the largest emissions of oxides of nitrogen and hydrogen chloride per metric ton of municipal solid waste. Still, the report says, the potential negative effects, such as dust, poor air quality and effects on plants and animals, soils and water quality "can be controlled under normal operating conditions."

Landfills got a clean bill of health in the new study. "Many epidemiological studies have been carried out to investigate the health effect of landfill sites, but have found no convincing evidence to suggest that emissions from modern facilities harm human health," the report states.

Detailed studies have found that living close to a landfill site, the report found, "does not increase the chance of getting cancer to a level that can be measured."

"The evidence on environmental effects is limited," said Morley, "but such as there is, does not appear to suggest adverse environmental effects of waste management, other than those we know about and are already addressing, such as methane emissions from landfill.

This report indicates that the most important impact from landfill sites at the national and global level is caused by emissions of greenhouse gases such as methane. Methane emissions from landfill account for about 27 percent of the national total.

A refuse lorry makes its rounds (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)

As a source of the hazardous group of chemicals known as dioxins, incineration of municipal solid waste accounts for less than one percent of UK emissions, while domestic sources such as cooking and burning coal for heating account for 18 percent of dioxin emissions.

The emission of nitrogen oxides which degrade air quality cannot fairly be blamed on municipal solid waste management, the study found, as 42 percent come from road traffic, while only one percent of nitrogen oxides come from waste activities.

The science is less certain about emissions to soil and water rather than air and releases from forms of waste management other than landfill, such as composting, mechanical biological treatment or anaerobic digestion, the report admits. The Environment Agency is already undertaking research to look at composting and a continuing program of work on landfill.

Newspaper in plastic bags for recycling (Photo courtesy FreeFoto)

The report did not look at the benefits of avoiding raw material use by recycling, another problem for Friends of the Earth. "The impact of waste goes far beyond how we throw it away," the group said. "For every one ton of product we buy, 10 tons of materials have been used to make it."

Finally, the group faults the government for looking only at local impacts close to waste management facilities. "The UK's reliance on landfill and incineration has global environmental impacts too. Metal mining, for example, causes huge damage in developing countries, destroying biodiversity and using vast amounts of energy and water." Friends of the Earth says recycling more metal would reduce these impacts.