To The Editor of Townsend Letter for Doctors & Patients

Emissions Discharge Daily Averages are given in PPMC. PPMC = Parts Per Million Corrected to 7% Oxygen. The atmosphere contains 21% oxygen by volume so multiply these figures by three. Only three contaminates are monitored for: Carbon Monoxide [172 TPYA] Nitrogen Oxides [502 TPYA] and Sulphur Dioxide [292 TPYA]. TPYA = Tons Per Year Allowed into the air by state pollution Control Hearings Boards.

Absent from reports are the amount of emissions discharged of:

Arsenic [.034 TPYA]
Beryllium [.00068 TPYA]
Cadmium [.2 TPYA]
Chlorides [292 TPYA] includes Vinyl Chloride
Chromium [.2 TPYA]
Carbon Dioxide
Cooper [.17 TPYA]
Dioxins and Furans [.000006 TPYA]
Fluorides
Hydrocarbons (Benzene Ethylene) [3 TPYA]
Lead [3.4 TPYA]
Mercury [1.5 TPYA]
Nickel [.14 TPYA]
Particulates [68 TPYA]
PAH [.02 TPYA]
PCB [.00019 TPYA]
Selenium [.0068 TPYA]
Tin [.8 TPYA]
Vanadium [.01 TPYA]
Zinc [6.8TPYA]

All are known to be discharged from incinerators.

Even in minute quantities each substance is toxic. Some are cumulative and some are already known to be carcinogens. What about synergistic effects of simultaneous exposure to multiple toxins? Will the risks multiply? What are the effects on the immune system chromosomes genes and those not yet born? What kind of legacy for the future will this be? It took seventeen generations to destroy the Roman Empire by ingestion from lead-lined aqueducts and lead eating drinking utensils. Will we survive that long?

The air becomes saturated fallout contaminates the earth and water. Our watershed the snow in the mountains is downwind. Contaminated with these toxic substances the runoff flows to rivers lakes and recharges the water table aquifer. Besides the direct intake by animals and humans this contamination of air and water is absorbed by vegetation. Vegetation that would ordinarily give off oxygen. Vegetation that alone has the ability to convert inorganic minerals absorbed from soil and water into organic forms that animals and humans can use.

"Incinerated garbage ash is found to have several toxic substances" New York Times November 26 1987

"Incinerators: A problem not a solution" New York Times September 21 1991

"Incinerators become an outmoded technology" New York Times February 14 1992

United States Supreme Court rules that ash from incinerators is a hazardous material. May 2 1994

"Incineration and death by dioxin. Described as the most toxic Chemical known…." The Ecologist July-August 1997

"Increased mercury exposure in inhabitants living in the vicinity of a hazardous waste incinerator: A 10-year follow-up" Archives of Environmental Health March-April 1998

"UK [United Kingdom] government's new fondness for incinerator building…will lock the country into a technology which destroys human health and the environment and which other countries are moving away from as fast as they can. After 10 years' detailed assessment of evidence the US Environment Protection Agency announced that dioxins from incinerator ash pose a tenfold greater threat to human health than previously thought." The Ecologist October 2000

"Incinerators have been pinpointed as the major if not the largest sources of toxic emissions into the environment including heavy metals and ultra-toxic dioxins and furans which are known carcinogens. Communities living around and downwind of incinerators in countries like Japan and France have higher rates of cancer birth defects and infant mortality compared to incineration-free areas." Environment Bulletin February 18 2001

"Environment: E.U. [European Union] court raps France over waste incineration directives." European Report June 22 2002

Incinerators by Robert A. Kroboth www.citizengadfly.com. Please print and distribute copies of this publication.