When
organic material in municipal waste tips decomposes in the absence of
oxygen,
various gases are produced, including methane. This gas is flammable
and
can be "flared off" or used to produce electricity.
In
August 98, a paper was published in The Lancet
reporting an increase
in the numbers of birth defects occurring within 3 km of landfill
sites1.
Other work has also identified raised levels in the incidence of a
number
of cancers in people living near waste disposal sites2.
It has
been suggested that these are associated with toxic materials emanating
from the hazardous waste in the landfills. Researchers have identified
a number of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including
tetrachloroethylene,
trichloroethylene, toluene, benzene, vinyl chloride, xylene and ethyl
benzene
in the leachate2 and in landfill gases
3..
Canterbury
has a landfill site. which takes mainly domestic but also industrial
and
commercial waste from a wide area, not hazardous waste. The operators
check
all commercial waste as it comes into the site and there are regimes in
place for collecting and testing the gases and the leachate (the
rainwater
that seeps through the refuse).
However,
there may be cause for concern. There is no control over what people
put
in their dustbins and it is not possible to examine all of the 210,000
tonnes of household waste dumped each year. Research done in Texas4
has shown that municipal solid waste sites discharge as many harmful
gases
as hazardous waste sites. Discarded paint thinners, cleaning fluids and
other solvents were identified in leachate. The Lancet
article says,
"Municipal landfill sites that take domestic wastes can be as
environmentally
hazardous as those categorised as hazardous-waste sites."5
In
November 1998, Phil Bond, then Labour Councillor for
Sturry North
(which
abuts the Shelford landfill site) wrote to the City Council Pollution
Control
Section of Environmental Health with specific questions which were
forwarded
to the Environment Agency.
On
March 5, the Council received replies as follows:
-
Is there any evidence
of what proportion of gases escape from the landfill site, i.e. are not
collected and burnt off or otherwise removed? No.
-
Is there any analysis
of the leachate? The leachate is monitored at
this
site but there
is no requirement to monitor for VOCs. [Data was enclosed to show
monitoring
for some metallic elements and inorganic radicals, pH values,
groundwater
and leachate levels - Ed]
-
Would the products
of combustion of VOCs etc. be harmless? Possibly
not. The flare
is of an old design and is coming to the end of its life. It does not
meet
the current Agency specification for such equipment although the new
flare
will (an energy recovery system is due to be installed this year to
generate
electricity from landfill gas. Any excess gas will be flared off by a
new
flare.)
The
Environment Agency gave a presentation to the Council's Environment
Committee
on March 18 1999. In view of the answers they had given, Cllr Phil Bond
put
it to them that they should be testing for VOCs. Colin Buckle from the
EA said that while increases in cancers and birth defects had been
identified
in areas close to landfill sites, no causal link had been established.
He said Phil Bond was right to ask the question; research was being
done
by the Agency and others into dangers associated with landfill gases.
This
should be completed in about 18 months time.
[Collected landfill gases are now used to fuel gas turbines to poroduce
electricity, contributing to the National Grid. It is not known whether
turbine emissions are monitored.]
Research
results were published on 13 August 2001 by the
DoH6
which raised more questions than it answered. It confirmed that there
was
an increased level of birth defects in children born to mothers living
within 2 km of landfill sites. The work was made more difficult because
all landfill sites were included in the study, including closed sites;
a total of 19,196 in all, which means most of us liv within 3 km of a
landfill
site of one kind or another.
They did find further
increases in some defects in areas near to recently opened sites and
suggested
more work needed to be done in respect of these.
Further
reading:
-
1 The
Lancet Vol. 352 No 9126 Article
423 8 August 1998
"Risk of congenital anomalies near hazardous-waste landfill sites in
Europe:
the EUROHAZCON study" H Dolk, M Vrijheid, B Armstrong, L Abramsky, F
Bianchi,
E Garne, V Nelen, E Robert, J E S Scott, D Stone, R Tenconi
-
Updated January
2002: Lancet
2002; 359: 320-22 (You will need to register, then search for
"landfill")
-
2 Rachel's
Democracy & Health News #617
-
3 Rachel's
Democracy & Health News #226
-
4 Rachel's
Democracy & Health News #90
-
5 Parfitt
JP, Powell JC, Gray PCR,
Brainard JS, Lovett AA, Roberts LEJ. The risk management of hazardous
wastes,
their transport and disposal (Research report 12, Environmental Risk
Assessment
Unit). Norwich: University of East Anglia, 1993.
-
6Department
of Health Study by the Small Area Health Statistics Unit
(SAHSU) on
health outcomes in populations living around landfill sites
(COT/2001/04)
Comment
Top |
Home
30/03/99
Press
Release: The Lancet 8
August 1998
TOXIC DUMPS AND BIRTH DEFECTS
(pp 417, 423-27)
Women living within 3 km
of hazardous-waste landfills have a "small, but significant" increased
risk of giving birth to children with birth defects, according to Dr
Helen
Dolk and colleagues from London, UK, in a study published in this
week's
Lancet. But whether the increased risk detected by the study truly
results
from living near hazardous waste landfills or to other factors remains
unknown, add the investigators.
Dr Dolk and colleagues focused
on 21 hazardous waste landfills in Belgium, France, Denmark,
Italy,
and the UK. By reviewing
official birth-defect registries, they identified 1089 children born
with
birth defects whose mothers had lived within 7 km of the landfills.
They
then matched each of these children with two children whose mothers
also
lived within 7 km of the landfills to see if there was a relation
between
the distance a mother lived from a landfill and the risk her child
would
be born with a birth defect.
After accounting for differences
in the mothers' age and socio-economic status factors previously
linked
to birth-defect risk,
the investigators found that there was a 33% increased risk of birth
defects
among children born of mothers living within 3 km of the landfills,
compared
with mothers living 3-7 km from the sites. "There was a significantly
overall
increased risk of neural-tube defects, malformations of the cardiac
septa,
and malformations of the great arteries and veins in residents near the
landfill sites in our study," say Dr Dolk and colleagues.
However, in his Commentary
(p 417) Professor Gˆran Pershagen from the Institute of Environmental
Medicine
in Stockholm, Sweden, cautions that the results of the study are
difficult
to interpret because it is not known how much, if any, exposure the
mothers
had to chemicals from the landfills. "Overall the evidence is very
limited,"
writes Professor Pershagen, "and the results clearly point to the need
for further study".
Contact: Dr Helen Dolk, London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, London, UK, tel +44
(0)171
927 2415, fax +44
(0)171 580 4524; and Professor Gˆran Pershagen, Institute of
Environmental
Medicine,
Stockholm, Sweden, tel +46 8 728 7460, fax +46 8 30 45 71
