Incineration has been used widely for waste disposal, including household, hazardous, and medical wasteâ€"but there is increasing public concern over the benefits of combusting the waste versus the health risk from pollutants emitted during combustion. Waste Incineration and Public Health informs the emerging debate with the most up-to-date information available on incineration, pollution, and human healthâ€"along with expert conclusions and recommendations for further research and improvement of such areas as risk communication. The committee provides details on: Processes involved in incineration and how contaminants are released. Environmental dynamics of contaminants and routes of human exposure. Tools and approaches for assessing possible human health effects. Scientific concerns pertinent to future regulatory actions. The book also examines some of the social, psychological, and economic factors that affect the communities where incineration takes place and addresses the problem of uncertainty and variation in predicting the health effects of incineration processes.

Mutual distrust defines the relationship between those who are the sources of hazardous wastes and those who oversee their activities. A lack of credibility, argue the authors, is a formidable, if not the biggest, obstacle to properly managing hazardous waste in the United States. Nowhere is the credibility gap wider than where there are hazardous waste management facilities or where sites have been proposed.The purpose of this book is to provide comprehensive perspectives on hazardous waste sites in the United States. The sources of hazardous waste are described along with the scientific and legal climates that allowed wastes to be discarded with little attention to impacts. Evidence is weighed for and against public health, as well as environmental, economic, and social damages at abandoned sites. Political processes and analytical techniques are suggested and illustrated for those who are involved in the siting of new facilities. A strategy for hazardous waste management is offered, together with approaches to substantially reduce the difficulties faced by local planners and site managers who face a hostile public.A historical legacy of mismanagement, fueled by exaggeration of impacts and by a lack of information, characterizes hazardous waste management in the United States. This book will be important to planners, environmental scientists, and public health officials. In order to assure accessibility for the casual reader, the authors keep the explanation of mathematical methods and technologies in this area to a minimum.