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A Comparison of Organic Emissions from Hazardous Waste Incinerators Versus the 1990 Toxics Release Inventory Air Releases
Citation:
Dempsey*, C R. AND E T. Oppelt*. A Comparison of Organic Emissions from Hazardous Waste Incinerators Versus the 1990 Toxics Release Inventory Air Releases. JOURNAL OF THE AIR & WASTE MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION. AWMA, Pittsburgh, PA, 43(10):23-73, (1993).
Impact/Purpose:
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Description:
Incineration is often the preferred technology for disposing of hazardous waste and remediating Superfund sites. The effective implementation of this technology is frequently impeded by strong public opposition to hazardous waste incineration (HWI). One of the reasons cited for this opposition is the perception that the emission of organics pose an unreasonable threat to human health. While numerous risk assessments for these facilities have demon- strated that the risks from the inhalation of HWI emissions are very low, this has not totally allayed some of the concerns. In order to put organic emissions in perspective, the mass of these emissions from the incineration of hazardous waste on a national scale has been estimated using "reasonable worst-case" assumptions and compared to the 1990 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) air releases. Comparisons were made for 15 carcinogenic organic compounds and 17 non-carcinogenic organic compounds. Ratios for all but one of these compound-specific HWI emissions to their corre- sponding TRI air releases ranged from 0.0003 to 0.678 percent. The total mass emissions (110.5 tons) of all 32 specific organics from HWIs was less than 0.03 percent of the corresponding 1990 TRI air releases (431,586 tons).
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A Comparison of Organic Emissions from Hazardous Waste Incinerators Versus the 1990 Toxics Release Inventory Air Releases