Campaigners against incinerators often point out that the USA has moved away from incineration as the preferred option for waste disposal on health grounds. Incineration firms know that they would never survive the ensuing lawsuits rising from the health effects (even if they got a pollution permit in the first place). The USA also monitors fine particulate emissions, unlike the UK, where our elected representatives and health professionals prefer to bury their heads in the sand.
For example, we met Mark Southgate - the Head of Planning and Environmental Assessment at the Environment Agency - last weekend and he couldn't tell us anything about the EA's policy on licensing incinerators in the light of the recent EU directive on the need to reduce fine particulate emissions. He appeared to know nothing about emissions at all but then he did move to the EA from the RSPB!
A White House study carried out in 2003 showed that environmental regulations are well worth the costs they impose on industry and consumers, resulting in significant public health improvements and other benefits to society.
The report, issued by the Office of Management and Budget, concluded that the health and social benefits of enforcing tough new clean-air regulations during the past decade were five to seven times greater in economic terms than were the costs of complying with the rules. The value of reductions in hospitalization and emergency room visits, premature deaths and lost workdays resulting from improved air quality were estimated between $120 billion and $193 billion from October 1992 to September 2002.
By comparison, industry, states and municipalities spent an estimated $23 billion to $26 billion to retrofit plants and facilities and make other changes to comply with new clean-air standards, which are designed to sharply reduce sulphur dioxide, fine-particle emissions and other health-threatening pollutants.
Read it all at:
http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2003/Gain-Pollution-Rules-OMB27sep03.htm
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