Thermal treatment
Hospital Incinerators: They May Be Making People Sick
The same hospitals that are working to heal people’s poor health may be making them sick when they burn their medical waste in incinerators, thus releasing dioxin into the environment. Julie Edelson-Halpert reports on this still wide-spread practice and on what other options are possible.
Yimby?
Adam Hochberg of member station WUNC reports on the brouhaha over a plan to site a toxic waste incinerator in a rural North Carolina town. The town fathers of Woodland, North Carolina have offered to host the incinerator, possibly ending a seven-year search by the state to site such a facility. But some say the […]
Latvia’s Love Canal
Reporter Bruce Gellerman visits what Latvian environmental activists call their republic’s worst toxic waste dump. At the site just outside the capital Riga, liquid waste from five chemical and pharmaceutical factories is stored in open pools, burned in a crude incinerator and injected into the ground. The waste is suspected of killing a nearby forest […]
Backyard Burning
A new study by the Environmental Protection Agency found that just a few people burning their own garbage in the backyard can release as much dioxin into the atmosphere as a municipal trash incinerator serving 120,000 households. Janet Raloff of Science News talks to host Steve Curwood about this practice.