Thermal treatments, like incineration, are consolidated methods to treat waste to recover thermal and electrical energy. Flue gas treatment technologies, if well operated, can permit to control pollution.
Public opinion and politicians sometimes claim that incineration plants or similar sites create serious problems to people's health, without citing scientific basis.
I would like to know if there are recent studies, from all over the world, about this topic, that can describe what happened when the site was monitored and exposure risk was calculated, or references to full scale studies (national level). I add a very interesting article which treated a specific case in Italy.
The most pollution is done by humans who are alive: Keeping in mind that a developing fetus is vulnerable to environmental insults, there is no doubt that e.g. proper testing of dental materials on embryonal resorption is a very important line of research to pursue. A recent 2-year umbilical cord blood testing in the United States, Canada and the Netherlands found as many as 232 toxic chemicals in newborns (www.ewg.org/minoritycordblood/fullreport). In fact academic and independent bio-monitoring studies have detected up to 358 industrial chemicals, pesticides and pollutants in the cord blood of American infants. German scientists have found that infants born to mothers with elevated blood levels of chlorinated dioxins and furans in breast milk had lower cord blood levels of estradiol and testosterone which are needed in adequate levels for normal reproductive system development. These findings execute solid evidence that fetuses are exposed to a multitude of dangerous substances while still in mother’s womb, such complex mixtures may have life long consequences - some are toxic to the developing brain. Who still wonders that cancer incidence is increasing in all age groups including very young children?
University clinics could initiate series of independent cord-blood testing, e.g. within the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to identify and quantify the full extent of chemicals originating from medical resin exposures in the womb over time. The knowledge that industrial chemicals or compounds that degrade into endocrine disruptors, carcinogens and/or neurotoxins, can cross the placenta in large numbers and contaminate fetuses before birth, is fairly disturbing. Exposure to mixtures, like dental composites, may result more severely than single chemicals. We need to keep in mind that the environment (lifestyle) we create (live) washes over the genes and changes biological and behavioral functioning that leads to health, disease and/or tragedy - imbalances in gene expression or/and functioning result in the symptoms that we see in diseases.
Here you can find a bibliography of long-term effects of incinerators on health
http://www.dors.it/alleg/spott/201402/biblio_lungo%20termine.pdf
This may be of interest: The Impact on Health of Emissions to Air from Municipal Waste Incinerators RCE 13
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335090/RCE-13_for_web_with_security.pdf
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