1. Hazardous Waste

2. Waste Disposal Problems
Solid Waste:
Anything not wanted, not liquid or gas
Municipal trash
Mining wastes
Sewage sludge
11 billion metric tons/yr in US
Hazardous Waste
Solid, liquid
Potential threat to human health or the environment
Not just toxins

3. Types of Hazardous Wastes
Some but not all toxic:
39 listed toxins: carcinogens, mutagens, teratogens
Flammable
Explosive / unstable
Corrosive

4. Love Canal - 1978 Neighborhood of Niagara Falls, NY
Odors, chemicals in yards
Children burns on hands after playing
Miscarriage, birth defects (56%! ’74-78), cancer

5. Love Canal

6. Love Canal Residents led by Lois Gibbs
21,000 tons of chemical waste beneath neighborhood
Corroding drums of waste
Including carcinogens (dioxin, benzene)

7. What to Do With Hazardous Waste
1. Produce less hazardous waste
Change industrial processes
Recycle and reuse: 33% Europe, 10% US

8. What to Do With Hazardous Waste
2. Convert to less hazardous substances
Chemical detoxification
Bioremediation: bacteria break down toxins
Phytoremediation: some plants remove contaminants
Don’t miss in textbook: “Phytoremediation” p.489

9. What to Do With Hazardous Waste
3. Incineration: burning
Reduces volume
Potential for air pollution
Ash w/toxins
NIMBY: “not in my back yard”

10. What to Do With Hazardous Waste
4. Discharge to streams
Long history of this simple solution
PCBs, GE plant near Albany

11. What to Do With Hazardous Waste
5. Land disposal: problems
Love Canal, New York ( )
“Civil Action,” Woburn, Mass. ( )
Toms River NJ: cancer cluster (TCE cause)
Dioxin: sprayed in Times Beach, Missouri, to hold down dust (streets, horse ring)
Leukemia, other cancers
400,000 tons of contaminated soil

12. Hazardous Waste & Water Aquifers: ground water bodies

13. Where to put hazardous wastes?
5. Secure hazardous waste landfills
More careful land disposal

14. Where to put hazardous wastes?
5. More Land Disposal:
Surface water impoundments
Deep well injection
Encapsulation: deep storage
Goal: “Perpetual storage”
Is this possible?

15. Where to put hazardous wastes?
6. Export
e-waste:
70% to China
Guiya, one city: 82% children w/lead poisoning, and dioxin in air at 86X safe levels

16. Preventing and Cleaning Up Hazardous Waste: Two US Laws
1) RCRA: Resource Conservation and Recovery Act 1976
Test and manage toxic and hazardous stuff
“Cradle” (where produced) to “grave” (where dumped) tracking

17. Preventing and Cleaning Up Hazardous Waste Problems
2) U.S. Superfund Law: CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (1980; amended 1984)
EPA to take emergency action
Bring suit against responsible parties for cleanup $$$
Revolving fund: much cleanup until 2000
Congress let “polluter pays” tax expire; govt funds needed but limited

18. Superfund Sites
Old factories, chemical manufacturing plants, mining distcts, old dumps
1680 on Superfund list: high priority (NJ: 109 of these)
EPA estimates 36,000 seriously contaminated sites in the U.S.
General Accounting Office says 400,000 sites.

19. Superfund Sites Green = cleaned up Near you. see www. epa
Superfund Sites Green = cleaned up Near you? see Toxic Resources Inventory

20. Brownfields
properties that are abandoned or underutilized because of contamination.
New Jersey: 23,000 known contaminated sites; 10,000 are brownfields