The Impact of the Dioxin Issue On Resource Recovery in the United States

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Abstract
Alternative solutions to the solid waste disposal crisis include recycling and waste reduction and large-scale energy and materials recovery facilities (known as resource recovery and RDF, respectively). The discovery of dioxin and furan emissions from resource recovery plants has led to an intensive focus on the dioxin issue by the public, the regulators, and the builders of the plants. This paper discusses the issues concerning dioxin currently being debated by the scientific community, including dioxin and furan toxicity in animals (and extrapolation to humans), toxic equivalents, the processes of dioxin formation in resource recovery plants, the role of source separation of plastics and paper from refuse in mitigation of dioxin formation, and the roles of combustion-regulation and air-pollution control devices in the destruction and reduction of dioxin emissions. In addition, the steps that the New York City Sanitation Department has chosen for exploring the health risk of dioxin emissions (the Fred C. Hart Risk Assessment) and to reduce emissions of dioxins from its proposed resource recovery plants (both in terms of combustion regulation and control devices) are discussed.