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Emissions of unintentional persistent organic pollutants from open burning of municipal solid waste from developing countries
Citation:
Zhang, T., H. Fiedler, G. Yu, G. S. Ochoa, W. F. Carrroll, Jr, B. K. GULLETT, S. Marklund, AND A. TOUATI. Emissions of unintentional persistent organic pollutants from open burning of municipal solid waste from developing countries. CHEMOSPHERE. Elsevier Science Ltd, New York, NY, 84(7):994-1001, (2011).
Impact/Purpose:
journal article
Description:
Open burning of waste is the most significant source of polychlorinated dibenzo-para-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/PCDF) in many national inventories prepared pursuant to the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). This is particularly true for developing countries. Yet there have been very few studies of open burning capable of generating reliable emission factors (EF), and even fewer conducted on waste from emerging economies. Emission factors for POPs such as PCDD/PCDF, dioxin-like polychlorinated biphenyls (dl-PCB) and penta- and hexachlorobenzenes (PeCBz, HCB) from open burning of municipal solid waste (MSW) in China and Mexico are reported here. Six different waste sources were studied varying from urban-industrial to semi-urban to rural in both countries. In the Mexico experiments, tests included urban-industrial waste before and after separation of common recyclables and after addition of electronics waste (e-waste). For PCDD/PCDF, the emission factors to air for the dataset comprising both countries ranged from 3.0 to 650 ng TEQ kg waste and for dl-PCB from 0.092 to 54 ng TEQ/kg waste In all experiments, dl-PCB was a minor contributor to total TEQ (0.1%-15%), and PCDF were responsible for the majority of the TEQ and mass of 17 PCDD/PCDF congeners (average 81% and 83%, respectively). Within this dataset, emissions of PCDDIPCDF and dl-PCB in the China samples were much lower than those from Mexico. Emission factors for PeCBz spanned a wide but similar range. Within the datasets for each country there is no indication of significant waste composition effect on emission factor with the exception of the significantly higher Mexico rural samples.
