Health Risk Assessment of Hazardous Waste Incinerator Stack Emissions

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Abstract
The operating performance of one of the most modern incineration facilities in West Germany has been extensively tested by German and U.S. environmental authorities to provide a basis for evaluating operating characteristics and establishing future regulations. Using the Inhalation Exposure Methodology (IEM) to estimate the offsite exposure to 25 metals and PCB's in the stack emissions, a health risk assessment was performed of the risk of adverse health effects due to exposures to stack emissions assuming a variety of exposure conditions. Exposure guidelines were developed to assess the relative risk of non-carcinogenic effects. The densely populated Newark/New York area population was selected as the population being hypothetically exposed to these stack emissions. Neither the metals nor the organics were found to pose a high risk to offsite populations under normal operating conditions. Offsite concentrations of stack emissions are as much as up to several orders of magnitude below "acceptable" ambient exposure levels for non-carcinogenic effects. The risk of developing cancer appears to lie between −7 (assuming realistic exposure conditions) and −5 (worst case) for individuals exposed to the highest ground-level concentrations of emissions from a 33-meter stack. For individuals exposed to average concentrations, the risk of developing cancer ranges between −9 and −7 assuming realistic exposure conditions and between −7 and −7 under worst case assumptions. Risks may be considerably lower as most metals were not present at current limits of detection, and therefore assumed to be present at the limits of detection for risk calculations. These six estimates represent slight increases (<<1%) over the cases of cancer which are already expected to develop in the population from all causes. Due to the high level of uncertainty inherent in developing these estimates, these risk estimates can only be used to indicate the relative degree of risk posed by such a facility and not calculations of absolute risk. The strength of these conclusions is also limited by the errors inherent in making several necessary assumptions as well as the lack of certain required data. These limitations and the major sources of uncertainty in the analysis are clearly outlined

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