BOULDER — Unregulated trash burning around the globe is pumping far more pollution into the atmosphere than shown by official records. A new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research estimates that more than 40 percent of the world’s garbage is burned in such fires, emitting gases and particles that can substantially affect human health and climate change.
The new study provides the first rough estimates, on a country-by-country basis, of pollutants such as particulates, carbon monoxide, and mercury that are emitted by the fires. Such pollutants have been linked to serious medical issues.
The researchers also estimated emissions of carbon dioxide, the most common greenhouse gas produced by human activity.
Unlike emissions from commercial incinerators, the emissions from burning trash in open fires often go unreported to environmental agencies and are left out of many national inventories of air pollution. For that reason, they are not incorporated into policy making.
“Air pollution across much of the globe is significantly underestimated because no one is tracking open-fire burning of trash,” said NCAR scientist Christine Wiedinmyer, lead author of the new study. “The uncontrolled burning of trash is a major source of pollutants, and it’s one that should receive more attention.”
Quantifying the extent of burning trash may change how policy makers track emissions, as well as how scientists incorporate air pollution into computer models used to study the atmosphere.
Because trash burning is unregulated and unmonitored, Wiedinmyer said that actual emissions could be larger or smaller than the study’s estimates by a factor of two. Still, the analysis represents the most comprehensive effort to date to account for emissions from trash burning.
The new study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, was funded by the National Science Foundation, which is NCAR’s sponsor. It was co-authored by scientists from the University of Montana and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who were also involved in measuring the composition of trash-burning emissions.
Shrouded in smoke
Trash burning is a global phenomenon. But it is most prevalent in developing countries where there are fewer trash disposal facilities, such as landfills and incinerators.
The amount of garbage burned in remote villages and crowded megacities is likely on the rise, as more people worldwide are consuming more goods. The trash often contains discarded plastics and electronics as well as traditional materials such as food scraps and wood.
Wiedinmyer began wondering about the impact of burning trash while visiting remote villages in Ghana. The villages were shrouded in smoke caused in part from trash fires that smoldered all day.
To estimate emissions from trash fires, Wiedinmyer and her co-authors compared population figures and per capita waste production with official tallies of trash disposal for each country in the world. They estimated that 1.1 billion tons (1 billion metric tons), or 41 percent, of the total waste generated worldwide is disposed of through unregulated burning every year.
The countries that produce the most total waste, according to the study’s methods, are heavily populated countries with various levels of industrial development: China, the United States, India, Japan, Brazil, and Germany. But the study concluded that the nations with the greatest emissions from trash burning are populous developing countries: China, India, Brazil, Mexico, Pakistan, and Turkey.
By analyzing consumption patterns in each country, the research team then estimated the type and amount of pollutants from the fires.
The study concluded that as much as 29 percent of human-related global emissions of small particulates (less than 2.5 microns in diameter) come from the fires, as well as 10 percent of mercury and 40 percent of a group of gases known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These pollutants have been linked to such significant health impacts as decreased lung function, neurological disorders, cancer, and heart attacks.
Trash burning in some countries accounts for particularly high quantities of certain types of pollutants. In China, for example, 22 percent of larger particles (those up to 10 microns in diameter) come from burning garbage.
The global impact on greenhouse gas emissions appears to be less, though still significant, with burning trash producing an estimated 5 percent of human-related carbon dioxide emissions. (By comparison, the Kyoto Protocol strove for a global 5 percent cut in greenhouse-gas emissions from industrialized countries.) In certain developing countries—such as Lesotho, Burundi, Mali, Somalia, and Sri Lanka—the trash burning produces more carbon dioxide than is tallied in official inventories. This discrepancy can be important in international negotiations over reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Wiedinmyer said the next step in her research will be to track the pollutants to determine where they are having the greatest impacts.
“This study was a first step to put some bounds on the magnitude of this issue,” she said. “The next step is to look at what happens when these pollutants are emitted into the atmosphere—where are they being transported and which populations are being most affected.”
About the article
Title: Global Emissions of Trace Gases, Particulate Matter, and Hazardous Air Pollutants from Open Burning of Domestic Waste
Authors: Christine Wiedinmyer, Robert J. Yokelson, and Brian K. Gullett
Publication: Environmental Science and Technology
doi: 10.1021/es502250z
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25019173
Abstract
The open burning of waste, whether at individual residences, businesses, or dump sites, is a large source of air pollutants. These emissions, however, are not included in many current emission inventories used for chemistry and climate modeling applications. This paper presents the first comprehensive and consistent estimates of the global emissions of greenhouse gases, particulate matter, reactive trace gases, and toxic compounds from open waste burning. Global emissions of CO2 from open waste burning are relatively small compared to total anthropogenic CO2; however, regional CO2 emissions, particularly in many developing countries in Asia and Africa, are substantial. Further, emissions of reactive trace gases and particulate matter from open waste burning are more significant on regional scales. For example, the emissions of PM10 from open domestic waste burning in China is equivalent to 22% of China’s total reported anthropogenic PM10 emissions. The results of the emissions model presented here suggest that emissions of many air pollutants are significantly underestimated in current inventories because open waste burning is not included, consistent with studies that compare model results with available observations.
w.w.wygart
August 26, 2014 at 7:23 pm
Waste incinerators were the worst dioxin emitters in earlier times (begin 1990’s). Since then the knowledge of dioxin formation and techniques to avoid it made that waste incinerators are insignificant sources nowadays.
The main dioxin emissions (and lots of PAH’s) nowadays indeed are from trash & garden waste backyard burning, forbidden in my country, but still done by a lot of people.
Main cause: the low burning temperature which gives maximum dioxin formation between 200-600°C.
Modern incinerators operate at 800°C and higher effectively destroying any dioxins, after steam generation followed by quenching to pass the 600-200°C trajectory as fast as possible and de-NOX catalysts, which also destroy the last traces of dioxins.
About barrel burning, I suppose the main figures of that article are here on the Chlorophiles pages:
http://home.scarlet.be/chlorophiles/en/en_di_src.html#Bar
North Americans, Europeans and Japanese are incredibly naive and sheltered, when it comes down to it. Outside these zones plus maybe a handful of others, the smells of burning garbage, untreated / barely treated sewage, and, the coal fires of street vendors, are pervasive.
The Greens in my neck of the woods, pat themselves on the back over the amount of recycling they achieve. They seem to be unaware that most of the plastics are bundled up and exported to China, in shipping containers making an otherwise empty return trip. Once the material has been sorted by hand, and anything of value recovered, the balance is usually burnt on open fires. The greens prefer this, to disposal in the UK , yet they still like to think that we are the ones who fail to take responsibility for our consumption.