Inconclusive link between incineration and health

The study comes despite the UK-wide Health Protection Agency publishing a report last month claiming that there was “no significant link” between incineration and human health risks (see letsrecycle.com story).

The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA) commissioned the ‘Incineration of Waste and Reported Health Effects' study to assess the impact of all thermal treatment in the country on inhabitants and determine if there were any adverse effects for nearby residential populations.
The research, carried out by Heath Protection Scotland (HPS), found some evidence that historically there could have been links between illness and incineration due to plants operating before 2003 having higher levels of emissions.

However, it claimed that any impact was likely to be small and that for modern plants fewer emissions were produced and the adverse effects on human health were likely to be even more “minimal and harder to detect”.

SEPA claimed that while it was unable to draw any conclusive link between the two subjects, it was “relatively reassuring” that it had found no strong evidence to show that incineration had a demonstrably negative impact on human health.

However, it stressed that the lack of conclusive evidenc, did not preclude there being some adverse effect which had defined confirmation to date.

As a result, it stressed that new incineration developments would still need to take into account air quality especially when proposed near residential populations.

Calum MacDonald, SEPA's director of environmental and organisational strategy, said: “Present controls are designed to protect human health and are precautionary due to the level of uncertainty. SEPA will continue to apply the precautionary approach when regulating new and existing thermal treatment plants, and will take any new evidence into account.”

Recommendations

SEPA said that the topic of health risks posed by incineration facilities was “complex”, which had put limitations on its own research findings and that they would therefore require careful interpretation.
In the conclusions to the study, it was recommended that future research into the impact of incineration should be “more clearly focused on specific aspects of incineration”.

Among its focal points, Health Protection Scotland said that studies should depend less on proxy calculations of exposure to emissions, use life-cycle analyses to take into account other pollutants associated with the complete waste management process and use more analytical techniques to create a more reliable conclusion.

The document identified that growing use of incineration could increase emissions and, by association, pose a greater health risk.

However, the study claimed that the Scottish Government had made moves to address this with its Zero Waste agenda, which limits the use of energy-from-waste as a disposal route to 25% of municipal waste arisings by 2025.

Mr McDonald said: “The thermal treatment of waste, in the form of incineration, is one of several options for the disposal of waste in the Scottish Government's Zero Waste plan currently out for consultation.”