The virtually indestructible Pfas waste puts largely low-income neighborhoods at risk, public health advocates say
  • athatet@lemmy.zip
    18·
    4 days ago

    Me in Boy Scouts years ago not throwing my styrofoam plate into the campfire because it would put shit into the air 🤡

    • FurryMemesAccount@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      2·
      4 days ago

      That’s pretty smart actually. Incinerators tend to burn trash at much higher temperatures than campfires, less harmful chemicals survive the heat and the toxic ashes are supposedly managed, at least they’re meant to be in the EU.

  • CmdrShepard49@sh.itjust.works
    10·
    4 days ago

    Our state mandated that these facilities add air monitoring equipment to measure what they’re releasing. In return, the local garbage burning facility closed its doors.

  • Arrandee@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    4 days ago

    Luckily the law is an unerring indicator of absolute fact and guarantor of the common good, and it says these emissions are totally cool.

  • tomatolung@sopuli.xyz
    1·
    3 days ago

    I don’t this this is good and I’m glad this is coming to light, but there are some emerging tech solutions like Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) which seem like it might be able to be tacted on to the existing filtration process (with an added expense obviously) in the near future which might mitigate this.

    I have serious doubts though that the federal initiatives will force this though, and I’d expect it to be a State or local requirement. Or even being solved abroad and brought back to the states.

    • tomatolung@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      3 days ago

      Depending on what you are considering as air quality, and if you also consider water/ground quality risks too? Landfills produce a large amount of methane which not good on greenhouse gases, as well as providing a large amount of leachate risk. This is compared to the much lower land use and Waste to Energy production capacity which incinerator provide, while also having some emissions, particulate, and ash disposal issues.

      So if you are a big city or Island without enough land and enough budget to build a facilite to mitigate the negatives (San Francisco, Hawaii, Washington DC, New York, Boston, etc), then incineration begins to make sense if you can mitigate the negatives to a high enough degree. Islands can indeed have to do it as there is just no viable alternative. It can be incredibly well used to as the Shetlands have a WTE which also uses waste energy to heat homes and buildings replacing home furnaces and being more efficient.