Disadvantages Of Incineration

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Introduction

Incineration is the process of the destruction of waste by converting the organic material to carbon dioxide and water vapour by fire leaving only the ash and non-combustibles to dispose in the landfill

(http://www.saincinerator.com). Ash is the incombustible inorganic residue after the waste has been destructed by means of incineration. Incineration is another method that is used for reduction of waste in the form of burning waste leaving smaller amount of ash. The incinerators can be in the form of oil, gas, coal fire or when burning high BTU waste such as paper, need no auxiliary fuel (http://www.sainincinerator.com).

Incineration can also refer as waste treatment technology, which includes the combustion of waste

Reduce the hazardousness of waste.

5. Generate electricity and/or heat. Energy can be recovered for heat or power consumption. 6. Sort out the scrap, which is thereafter used in steel industry.

5. Disadvantages of incineration

Pollution: Incineration is conducted with a number of outputs, which include ash and flue gas emission. Incineration emissions are released into the environments that are harmful. Before the flue gas cleaning systems were introduced, the flue gas has to move to atmosphere thus leading to pollution.

Dioxins and furans are released through the incinerator stack and are carcinogenic (Holland, 1999). According to Holland (1999) large stacks emit the excess heat and gases from the waste contribute to the greenhouse effect. Cost: The high cost of incineration plant has been a turnoff of for municipal authorities and is only now being addressed with the introduction of Waste-

To-Energy (WTE) plants (http://www.brighthubengineering.com). If something

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According to Holland (1999) a key disadvantage to incineration is that the entire waste stream is burned including materials that could possibly

Both incineration and landfill dominates global warming, freshwater aquatic Eco toxicity, and eutrophication of incineration and non-incineration alternatives (Zhang et al., 2008).

Another study conducted by Daniel et al. (2014) in England, to determine waste incineration and adverse birth and neonatal outcomes. Literature searches were performed within the Medline database, through PubMed and

Ovid interfaces. Their results shows that comprehensive literature search yielded studies, encompasses a range of outcomes, exposure assessment methods and study design. In these study congenital anomalies most studies reported no association with proximity to emissions from waste incinerators and all anomalies, but weak association for neural tube and heart defects and stronger associations with facial clefts and urinary defects. According to this study there is limited evidence for association between incineration and twinning. The current evidence is inconclusive and often limited by problems of exposure assessment, possible residual confounding, and lack of statistical power with variability in the study design and outcomes (Daniel et al., 2014).

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