China’s Incinerators Loom as a Global Hazard
source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/business/energy-environment/12incinerate.htm
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- settler
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After surpassing the United States as the world’s largest producer of household garbage, China has embarked on a vast program to build incinerators as landfills run out of space. But these incinerators have become a growing source of toxic emissions, from dioxin to mercury, that can damage the body’s nervous system.
And these pollutants, particularly long-lasting substances like dioxin and mercury, are dangerous not only in China, a growing body of atmospheric research based on satellite observations suggests. They float on air currents across the Pacific to American shores.
Chinese incinerators can be better. At the other end of Shenzhen from Longgang, no smoke is visible from the towering smokestack of the Baoan incinerator, built by a company owned by the municipal government. Government tests show that it emits virtually no dioxin and other pollutants.
But the Baoan incinerator cost 10 times as much as the Longgang incinerators, per ton of trash-burning capacity.
Tightening of China’s national standards has been stuck for three years in a bureaucratic war between the environment ministry and the main economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said a Beijing official who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly.
End of excerpt (New York Times)
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What do you think?
And these pollutants, particularly long-lasting substances like dioxin and mercury, are dangerous not only in China, a growing body of atmospheric research based on satellite observations suggests. They float on air currents across the Pacific to American shores.
Chinese incinerators can be better. At the other end of Shenzhen from Longgang, no smoke is visible from the towering smokestack of the Baoan incinerator, built by a company owned by the municipal government. Government tests show that it emits virtually no dioxin and other pollutants.
But the Baoan incinerator cost 10 times as much as the Longgang incinerators, per ton of trash-burning capacity.
Tightening of China’s national standards has been stuck for three years in a bureaucratic war between the environment ministry and the main economic planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said a Beijing official who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject publicly.
End of excerpt (New York Times)
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What do you think?
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ReganMann
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Maeveeo the sad thing is they ARE waiting for that...
- 2 years ago
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ReganMann
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Maeveeo
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Wait until it gets worst & people start dropping all over the place then maybe something will be done & money won't matter !
- 2 years ago
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Maeveeo
