1 What do we do with all the waste? Dealing with waste disposal issues that have implications for all of these different components of the environment… Looking at specific kinds of health outcomes associated with waste disposal and the problems involved in studying it and coming up with conclusive evidence that health outcomes are connected to waste disposal…

2 What do we do with all the waste? … Ongoing problem in developed countries Produce and consume vast amounts of products But also generates vast amounts of waste –Problem… what to do with it?

3 What do we do with all the waste? … Waste… –domestic, –manufacturing, –hospital/medical, –radioactive… Many different varieties… but the most serious by- products and waste from industrial production including industrialized agricultural production… wide range of chemicals and toxins… produced through production… harmful to health…

4 What do we do with all the waste? … Irony: Medical waste itself can sometimes represent a serious source of air pollution and a potential threat to health

5 What do we do with all the waste? … Especially in urban areas, in developed countries each hospitalized patient contributes about 13 pounds of waste a day…. Solid bandages, bedding, disposable syringes, surgical and medical tools, contaminated plastics, pathogenic remains, and so on….

6 What do we do with all the waste? … Often these waste products are burned, but concern that many medical incinerators have been found not to meet adequate standards of waste disposal… Waste is often burned incompletely so that acidic gases, heavy metals, toxic organics, and dioxins are emitted… with concentrations 10 to 100 times higher than those coming out of municipal incinerators.

7 What do we do with all the waste? … For waste disposal facilities more generally… How do we control or police incinerators… in the US and Canada that many have been forced to close because unable to meet regulatory standards on emissions This obviously has considerable relevance for the ongoing efforts to clean up the Sydney tar ponds

8 What do we do with all the waste? … One of the most alarming things about the issue there… uncertainty about the ability of the incinerator to burn hot enough to successfully destroy PCBs… At the same time, efforts to create new ones often meet with very vocal opposition…. NIMBY Where do you locate facilities?

9 What do we do with all the waste? … Evidence in US and Canada and other countries suggests that these kinds of facilities tend to be disproportionately located in poorer neighborhoods with higher proportions of visible minority residents… These kinds of conflicts motivated by concerns about the health of the local population…. “What will it mean for me and my children to have a waste incinerator a few blocks away?”