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Incinerators are a type of furnace used to burn solid wastes. These facilities emit harmful air pollutants and climate-heating gases. Some incinerators adhere to strict emissions controls, while others use none whatsoever.
Incinerators commonly compete with recyclers, landfills, and composting facilities for discarded materials. After sinking millions or even billions of dollars into these facilities, operators face economic pressure to keep “feeding them,” often with garbage that travels hundreds of miles on trucks, barges, and trains.
Wheelabrator Incinerator in Baltimore, MD.
Incinerators are uniquely toxic
The 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act singled out solid waste incinerators for their toxic air emissions. Clean Air Act Section 129, which governs solid waste incineration, sets limits for nine pollutants: particulate matter (a.k.a. soot), sulfur dioxide, hydrogen chloride, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, lead, cadmium, mercury, and dioxins/furans. Other chemicals, such as PFAS, are not controlled.
While the Clean Air Act seeks to regulate all solid waste combustors, in practice some industries have used regulatory loopholes and misrepresentations to bypass pollution control requirements or to opt for lesser standards.
Covanta Energy Resource Recovery Facility at Fairfax County’s I-95 Landfill Complex, Lorton, VA.
Incinerator pollution makes people very sick
Most incinerators are sited in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color, where they release vast amounts of soot, dioxins, heavy metals, nitrogen oxides, and other pollutants into the air. These emissions are linked to elevated risk of lung and heart diseases, neurological disorders, cancers, and other health harms. Living near incinerators is especially dangerous for children.
Types of incinerators
EPA uses various classifications for incinerators based on capacity, process, and type of material burned, for example, plastics, mixed municipal waste, used tires, hazardous and radioactive waste, human remains, or sewage sludge. A few of these classifications are described in more detail below.
Larger incinerator units are generally subject to stricter air pollution standards than smaller ones. Some large facilities avoid more stringent rules by building multiple small burners instead of a larger one. Incredibly, some industries, such as the used tire sector, have convinced EPA that what they burn is not solid waste and is thus exempt from Clean Air Act rules.
Municipal waste incinerators
Incinerators burn roughly 13% of household trash in the U.S. Roughly 30% of incinerated waste is plastic, and another 30% is food waste or yard trimmings.
Fifteen to 25% by weight of the waste burned becomes heavy-metal-rich ash, some of which escapes through the smokestacks. The remaining ash gets transported to landfill facilities, ash lagoons, or other incinerators, or it is added to asphalt, cement, or pavement concrete.
A majority of trash incinerators are located in Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Most are designated “waste to energy,” making them eligible for renewable energy subsidies. The burning trash produces heat, which turns water into high-pressure steam in a boiler, rotating the blades of a turbine generator to produce a limited amount of electricity.
Burning garbage is a very expensive, inefficient, and polluting way to make electricity. Even compared with dirty coal plants, incinerators release far more dioxins, mercury, and other air toxics.
Camden Energy Recovery Center, Camden, NJ.
Hospital, medical, and infectious waste incinerators
The number of hospital, medical, and infectious waste incinerators has plunged in recent decades. In 1996, there were roughly 4,500 in the U.S. In 1997, EPA released new emissions guidelines that made these incinerators less profitable. Thousands shut down or consolidated. Nine remain.
The U.S. leads the world in waste generation per hospital bed. Disposal costs often approach $1,000 per ton—more than 10 times the price for regular trash disposal—but some generators find ways to sidestep the rules. For example, other categories of incinerators that burn 10% or less of medical waste (by weight), alongside other materials, are exempt from the stricter standards.
Fairfax County residents unload their waste items at the I-95 Landfill Complex in Virginia.
Plastics incinerators
Pyrolysis incinerators heat plastic waste, transforming it into harmful air pollution, char (residue left from incomplete combustion), synthetic gas, and pyrolysis oils.
The plastics industry is trying to convince lawmakers and EPA that this so-called “chemical recycling” should not count as solid waste incineration. This determination would leave companies free to emit unlimited amounts of harmful air pollution without any monitoring, reporting, or control technologies.
Pyrolysis incinerators operate in low-oxygen conditions at temperatures ideal for the production of pollutants like dioxins, which are among the world’s most toxic air pollutants.
A waste-to-energy plant in Saugus, Massachusetts.
Crematoria
EPA had planned to regulate crematoria, but the funeral industry lobbied against any pollution controls, arguing that human remains are not “solid wastes.” As a result, crematoria are not subject to federal pollution limits.
These facilities release large amounts of mercury (primarily from dental fillings), a toxic heavy metal that affects the developing brain, causing serious neurological problems in children—and also dioxins, soot, volatile organic compounds, and other chemicals. In the U.S., more than 56% of human remains are cremated, with rates ranging from a low of 18% in Mississippi to a high of 77% in Nevada.
Rethinking materials management
Most important is to stop generating so much single-use plastic. Instead, we need systems to reduce, re-use, refill, repair, and regenerate materials.
Basic sorting systems can redirect materials to more appropriate waste streams, such as metals, paper, and glass. Food and yard waste can be beneficially diverted to composting facilities.
In the hospital setting, the use of sorting processes, dishwashing and laundry services, and sterilizing reusable equipment can all help to reduce waste. For example, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio stopped using incinerators in favor of steam-processing treatments. The hospital separates their waste into 37 different waste material streams.
Progress is possible. Join Moms Clean Air Force to advocate for strengthened air pollution controls, more sensible materials management, and reduced reliance on single-use plastics.
Learn more about Moms’ work on waste incineration.
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Released: August 2024