Question to Shropshire County Council 22 February, 2008
Concerning the proposed EfW burner-incinerator at Battlefield, Shrewsbury: ‘The Department does not monitor the possible health implications of the emission of PM2.5 particles from incinerators or industrial processes directly on an ongoing basis.’ Dawn Primarolo, Secretary of State for Health, October 2007 [Hansard]
Independent, peer-reviewed studies indicate that PM2.5 (fine particulates) from incinerators pass through abatement equipment and are implicated in a range of adverse health effects, some fatal. In view of the current availability of this knowledge, how does SCC propose to budget for the settlement of compensation claims arising from the inhalation of emissions from the proposed incinerator at Battlefield? Those selling incinerators constantly assure us that they are safe and that emissions are constantly monitored.Incinerators emit tiny invisible particulates called PM2.5s. They are breathed into the deepest part of your lungs and stay there. The World Health Organisation says there is no safe level of PM2.5s and that they are implicated in a range of serious diseases and deaths.
In the UK, only PM10s are monitored despite a large body of evidence from the United States that PM2.5s lead to a rise in mortality near incinerators. The US has been moving away from incineration since the 1990s. Research indicates that at least 24 monitors, calibrated down to PM1 would need to be sited constantly all round an incinerator to be effective. The British Society for Ecological Medicine (BSEM) regards the current state of incinerator monitoring to be inadequate and negligent. Studies show increases in many diseases including cancers, heart disease, childhood cancers and leukaemia near incinerators. There is a 2-fold increase at 12 years of exposure; it is 5-fold at 20 years. Environment Agency models show a doubling of heart attacks after even short-term exposure to PM2.5s up to 20 kilometres downwind of an incinerator.
Apologists for incinerators try to brush aside the evidence, pretending that PM2.5s are a fraction of PM10s (which are monitored) and therefore do not require separate monitoring. Monitoring of PM2.5s would show the presence of the most dangerous particulates. These same apologists also cite that incinerators are not the only cause of pollution and therefore invite us to think that ‘one more’ won’t make any difference. These same apologists tend to accuse scientists of ‘scare-mongering’.
Do you remember when they called Sir Richard Doll a scare-monger for warning us about smoking?
The BSEM says in a reply to an evaluation of their report ‘The Health Effects of Waste Incinerators’:
Hidden Costs of Incineration
Enviros state the impacts of incineration should be properly understood. We would certainly agree with this and one of these impacts is the cost to the local community. The European Commission have estimated the health and environmental costs of a 400,000 tonne a year incinerator to be between £9,000,000 and £57,000,000 a year. Another report by the European Commission found the health costs to be 48,000,000 euros annually. Any local authority considering allowing an incinerator should look very carefully at these huge hidden costs and budget appropriately.
We believe all local authorities considering having an incinerator built should not be kept in the dark about these hidden costs. We would also add that anything that creates such huge health costs also creates much human misery.
Local authorities should also look at the experience at Crymlyn Burrows at Neath, near Swansea. Here a waste company built an incinerator and then went bankrupt leaving the Council to run the incinerator and also leaving them millions of pounds in debt, a debt that continues to increase. Several towns in the USA have gone bankrupt after signing contracts with incinerator companies and then finding they could not supply enough waste.
Evaluation and responses at http://www.ecomed.org.uk/pub_waste.php
‘The Health Effects of Waste Incinerators’: J Thompson and HM Anthony
British Society for Ecological Medicine, 2006
‘Reply to Enviros Communication of September 2006’ ; J Thompson and HM Anthony
British Society for Ecological Medicine
‘Reply to Health Protection Agency’: J Thompson and HM Anthony
British Society for Ecological Medicine
Hansard, October 2007
These are the specific documents I used for this question and the background information. However, there are many more accredited sources of information about the health effects of incinerators.
