Relatively low level, but long-term exposure to airborne Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) are suspected for numerous of the cancer and serious chronic non-cancer health issues identified in the many epidemiological studies of persons living near landfills. See, for instance, this metastudy: [Click to Read]
The levels that are dangerous long term for many VOCs are well below the level that people can smell, so this can be an invisible killer that is out of sight, out of mind and easy to ignore.
Modern Landfill has a poor track record of controlling VOC air pollution. In their wastewater treatment process to remove highly hazardous VOCs from the Superfund Site before dumping the leachate into Kreutz Creek, they applied for and were permitted by PA DER to design and operate an air stripping process to remove most of the VOCs from the leachate. They did not, however, use the then Best Available Technology and include an absorption column (activated charcoal, for instance) to remove the VOCs from the air that was produced and then released to the atmosphere.
It wasn’t until about 1993 when an expert witness retained by the township pointed out that without an absorption column, the landfill was exposing its employees and nearby residents to high levels of the very same VOCs they were trying to remove from the groundwater so the residents wouldn’t have to breathe them while showering or walking by the creek.
Also, the expert witness noted that a calculation by the landfill in the permit application was off by a factor of 618, meaning that the concentration of released VOCs was actually 618 times higher than assumed and greatly exceeded the air standards for many of the VOCs, for instance exceeded by 93 times for vinyl chloride which is a known carcinogen and attacks the liver, lungs, blood and brain.
On top of that, the expert witness found that the air stripper was designed for leachate VOC concentrations much lower than actual for 9 of the most dangerous VOCs, so the concentrations in the air would in practice be much higher than designed and described so far.
1997 rules for air pollution abatement
In 1996 it became obvious to the EPA that even seemingly non-hazardous typical municipal solid waste (MSW) caused VOC off-gassing from the pile of trash harmful enough to significantly affect the health of residents living near sanitary landfills. By 1997, all medium to large MSW accepting landfills in PA were required to install a landfill gas collection and combustion system. Not all of the emissions can be collected in this way and some of the combustion products are harmful in their own right, but combustion helps to control odor and explosion hazards as well as some VOCs. Modern Landfill has such a system and uses an enclosed flare to combust the gasses they manage to collect.
Landfill air emissions v waste-to-energy plant
An intensive multi-year study would probably have to be commissioned to get a useful understanding of the air pollution from Modern Landfill. Besides, what would be measured today in the existing site would be very different from any new operation begun across Mt. Pisgah road. There is, however, an interesting paper from the Journal of Environmental Management that, using empirical values from the many studies of other non-hazardous solid waste facilities, compares the health impacts of air pollution for residents near a typical Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plant versus a typical non-hazardous waste (and non-Superfund) landfill, processing the same MSW. The study took into account the biogas collection requirements put in place in 1997 for landfills. You can find the paper here: [Click to View]
Air pollution from a landfill would likely be mainly VOCs. From a WTE plant, heavy metal particulates would also play a role.
The authors of the study looked at the cumulative effect on the health of everyone involved of putting a WTE plant in Brooklyn to handle one million tons/year of NYC’s MSW, then trucking the ash to a PA landfill versus building a waste transfer station in Brooklyn and trucking the same waste to a landfill in Pennsylvania. Modern Landfill handles a little more than one million tons/year as a comparison.
The authors only considered health effects of air pollution, but adding disease vectors, drinking water contamination and other non-air borne effects would have made the results look much worse for the landfill option, not better.
They considered the health effects on everyone along the truck routes, near the waste transfer station and both plants. Their conclusion is that taking everything into account it’s 5 times safer health wise to use the Waste-to-Energy plant in Brooklyn, truck the ash to PA, and also a lot of money would be saved in trucking expense.
But we could use the same information, found in Table 1 in the article, to learn something more important to our particular situation. Let’s forget about the trucking part, the waste transfer station and taking NYC’s ash. From a health standpoint would you rather be a neighbor of Brooklyn’s WTE plant processing NYC’s MSW, or a neighbor of Modern Landfill taking NYC’s MSW and not their ash (since they don’t produce any ash in that case)?
Comparing the numbers from Table 1 of the journal article, the chances of a person contracting cancer from air pollution by living near a facility are:
Landfill – one in 26,000
WTE – one in 15,000,000
The National Research Council considers the health threshold of cancer to go from “safe” at one in 1,000,000 to “dangerous” at one in 10,000. One in 10,000 is enough for the EPA to consider a facility for the Superfund list.
This data shows that landfills are 600 times more likely to cause cancer in local residents through air pollution than incinerating solid waste to make energy. This is because in the last 30 or so years the technology of treating incineration flue gas has transformed the industry. This is one of the reasons why WTE has almost entirely displaced landfills in Europe, and also a factor in why our own curbside trash in Lower Windsor Township goes to the local WTE plant and not to Modern Landfill.
The chance of getting a chronic non-cancer illness (low birth weight or birth defects, respiratory illnesses, immunologic abnormalities, etc.) is expressed as the Hazard Quotient. Acceptable risks are those with a Hazard Quotient of less than 1.0. Hazard Quotients from Table 1 of the above-mentioned study:
Landfill – 12.0
WTE – 0.0063
This data shows that living near landfills taking normal MSW is 1900 times more risky for chronic non-cancer illnesses, from an air pollution standpoint, than a modern WTE plant. The Hazard Quotient for a typical landfill is also considered high by EPA standards.
So, how do you feel now about that question — would you rather live near a landfill or a Waste-to-Energy plant?
According to the Constitution of Pennsylvania, we have a Right to clean air. As far as our health goes, air pollution is the invisible enemy. It can be hurting us even though we can’t see, hear, feel, taste or smell it. Statistically significant epidemiological studies of air pollution effects have shown that landfills of modern design are much more harmful per ton of MSW processed than waste-to-energy plants of modern design.
As residents of Lower Windsor Township, we do the responsible thing by sending our trash to the local WTE plant, which uses EPA Maximum Achievable Control Technology for solid waste management. It is our Right to refuse to be subjected to the documented health hazards associated with air pollution from landfills full of waste from other municipalities.