RDF = Refuse-Derived Fuel = Processed Municipal Waste
RDF is loaded with plastic (from the various plastics we use and discard every day), mercury, cadmium, lead, aluminum, and other toxic materials that are NOT removed as part of the “processing” before the garbage is burned. Some ground-up metals are removed – all that the large rotating magnet at the Newport garbage processing plant can pick up. But this magnet does not remove all the metal particles. Once burned, such toxins are emitted in very dangerous, very small particulate forms into the air we breather. NO scrubber can remove all of these toxins from the burner emissions. Wind plumes can carry these toxins hundreds of miles, wafting them onto distant land and water where they can (and do!) ultimately get into the food chain.
Environmental Toxins: A Cumulative Effect
Remember: Just because a garbage burner – or, for that matter, any kind of biomass burner, or a coal burner – meets the current EPA guidelines for emissions does NOT mean that those emissions are safe to humans or to the environment at large. EPA emissions standards have seriously eroded under the Bush Administration. We cannot trust them to protect our health. Also, what has long been overlooked in the business-as-usual approach to the regulation of emissions is the cumulative effect of various environmental toxins upon public health.
Because such harmful effects are cumulative – they mount within the body – they may take years or decades to finally overpower our immune systems. International Public Health and other independent, scientific researchers studying the effects of burner emissions – that is, researchers who have not been paid for by those in the incinerator and garbage-processing industries (who stand to profit or otherwise benefit by “proving” that burners are safe) – are discovering alarming relationships between the incidences of serious diseases – cancers, reproductive system disorders, immune system disorders, heart and lung disease, asthma and other breathing disorders (especially the increases in childhood asthma), ADHD and other brain-function disorders in children, and fetal health disorders – and patients’
proximity to burners.
Our concerns must transcend those of our own, individual health. Would you want your beloved dog or cat or horse or parakeet to breathe toxic air, or eat food with particles of mercury, dioxin, and cadmium in it? How about your kids? Or your grandchildren? Your parents? Your spouse? Your partner? Would you eat from a home garden with particulate fallout on its vegetables? It’s about ALL of us.