Incinerate & Medicate, or Legislate & Regulate

Foreword

Efficient and sustainable waste management is essential to safeguarding both public health and our environment. Our overreliance on waste incineration presents serious challenges, namely environmental contamination and associated health risks. Government policy must urgently evolve, prioritising comprehensive waste reduction and recycling initiatives, alongside rigorous legislative oversight.

By investing in innovative technologies such as waste-to-energy systems, we can transform waste disposal from an environmental burden into a resource, reducing dependence on harmful incineration practices. Moreover, stringent health impact assessments and transparent monitoring processes are essential to ensure local communities remain protected and informed.

What is needed is clear, practical legislation that supports sustainable practices and helps build a strong circular economy. With transparent, proactive leadership, we can reduce environmental damage, safeguard public health, and make sure our natural resources are managed responsibly. 

Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice MP

This article examines the potential environmental contamination and resulting damage and risks to human health posed by the incineration of municipal, industrial, clinical and domestic wastes, and discuss legislative controls that could be implemented by the government to avoid personal injury and extinguish threats to life. 

Of the many proverbs originating from ancient China the most appropriate to this current article is perhaps:

‘He that takes medicine and neglects diet wastes the skills of the physician.’

What this effectively means is, if you consume food that is potentially injurious to your well-being you will need to consult your doctor for him/her to prescribe medicine, and if you continue to eat the same food you will be wasting that medicine. Sadly this is often the case in present-day general practice (not within the scope of this article) but an analogous process would be municipal and industrial waste treatment: The ‘diet’ of a treatment plant is what it consumes i.e. the waste products that make up its feedstock. If the treatment process comprises incineration then what types of waste that facility consumes will dictate the type and nature of the gasses and vapours it emits through its chimney. If these gases affect the peoples’ health then they will need to seek the skills of a physician; if the plant continues to emit harmful gasses however, then any medical intervention will continue to be wasted. 

Take a step back for one moment: To date there has not been a rigorous and all-embracing assessment of global rare earth reserves, and no one really knows exactly what those resources are or their precise location. However, recently there has been debate within the media relating to international negotiations in respect of access to state-owned natural raw minerals, including such things as Lithium and Titanium minerals located in Ukraine. Mining of the world’s most important minerals is a long-term and hugely expensive enterprise. On average, it takes 18 years to develop a mine at a median cost of between £400 million and £1 billion, though this includes the construction and development costs of a separation plant to remove valuable minerals from ores extracted from the ground. Modern supply chains are frequently long and convoluted, involving many national governments, firms and individuals, which can make manufacturing of strategically important goods quite precarious, vulnerable as they are to factory shutdowns caused by war, pestilence and political whim along the supply chain. These complicated routes by which these products reach the end user make for very little transparency – a consumer buying an electric car for the perceived environmental benefit would find it very hard to find out if their electric car used Lithium extracted via highly-polluting, energy intensive hard rock extraction in China or much lower-impact ion exchange from Chilean seawater.

China currently dominates the mining of several of the world’s most important minerals, and the political risk of this country controlling too much of the global supply of some of these much-needed commodities at the same time as ramping up its military capabilities is worrisome. China has huge political influence in Sub-Sahara Africa, with state-controlled Chinese firms being responsible for large infrastructure projects in Mozambique for example (which has one of the world’s biggest deposits of Ilmenite, the ore from which titanium is extracted), or Democratic Republic of Congo, which has the lion’s share of the world’s cobalt reserves, effectively turning these countries into financial colonies. One such important mineral, Lithium, is an alkaline metal that has medical uses (Lithium carbonate remains a commonly-prescribed mood stabiliser you may remember Kurt Cobain singing about in the 1990s), but its biggest use is in the production of rechargeable Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries for small appliances like cell phones and laptops as well as for cars. Furthermore, it is an important chemical element used in the manufacture of oil lubricants (Lithium grease is highly-viscous so useful in heavy machinery), rocket fuels and nuclear coolants, plus components in aircraft, armour plating, high speed trains and even thermonuclear weapons. Its important chemical colleague Titanium, first discovered in Cornwall in the late 18^th Century, is a durable, light and inert metal with high corrosion resistance and this substance has equally interesting uses in the production of surgical implants for hips, in construction of naval ships, missiles, aeroplanes, nuclear waste storage facilities and space craft.

The number and volume of different waste-types produced in the UK, coupled with their inherent toxicity, are ever increasing and, simultaneously, the use of incineration for waste treatment and disposal is on the rise. Consequently, the process of incineration is degrading the environment through the emission to atmosphere of hundreds of toxic and bio-accumulative pollutants. Moreover, within the human body many toxic compounds so emitted may attach to chromosomes, affect the immune system, alter behaviour, trigger cancer, or disrupt hormone regulation. Heavy metals (nickel, cadmium, lithium and cobalt mainly) enter the human body through the gastrointestinal tract, skin, or via inhalation. Toxic metals and metalloids (e.g. arsenic) have proven to be a major threat to human health, mostly because of their ability to cause cell membrane and DNA damage, and to distort bodily proteins, affecting enzyme activity and function. Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds produced by burning cause oxidative stress, producing free radicals which overload the anti-oxidants within the body and cause damage to DNA, leading to cancers, teratogenicity (danger to the unborn foetus), neurodegenerative diseases (such as Parkinson’s disease and Shy-Drager syndrome) and cardiovascular diseases which lead to angina, heart-attacks, limb claudication (from the Latin word for ‘limp’) and strokes.

These diseases cannot be reversed, though medication or surgery can improve prognosis and function for some. Most cases of cardiovascular disease are linked to smoking cigarettes as opposed to inhaling dioxins from burning waste, and the conditions outlined above have multiple risk-factors and causes other than pollutants from municipal waste incineration. Hence it is difficult to apportion blame on a local incinerator when dealing with disease in individuals since it takes cohort studies performed over many years in comparing populations living by incinerator facilities to those living further away. By watching what diseases develop in each group permits the production of data that quantifies the risks involved. Chronic ailments are spawned through various means of environmental exposure and since incinerators are able to deal with a variety of waste types, the resulting composition of their emissions will vary according to process efficiency and the nature of wastes being burnt at any given time. Consequently:

Operators of incineration facilities must be continuously policed and regulated to a robust standard to protect the welfare of local communities.

Waste-to-energy incineration provides a more efficient and sustainable alternative to conventional waste management processes that traditionally include landfill disposal, composting, and recycling. Consequently, an essential component of modern waste management technologies will be waste-to-energy incineration since this will have the additional benefit of generating both electrical and thermal energy whilst dealing with non-recyclable wastes. Importantly, the energies so generated will provide sustainable alternatives to those produced from fossil fuels, and will further reduce the overall environmental footprint, decrease the release of methane, and lessen other greenhouse gas emissions. 

In the UK, the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs introduced the Environmental Permitting Regulations (England and Wales) in 2010 but since that time England has seen recycling rates impeded by way of too much waste being taken for either incineration or landfill. Indeed, during the period 2022/23 half of the waste collected by local authorities was incinerated whilst 40% was recycled, but under recently introduced legislation only those projects meeting strict local and environmental conditions will receive government support. Throughout the world, drought, deforestation, air pollution and plastic waste contamination are amongst several factors accelerating climate change and global warming which cause great suffering and loss of biodiversity. Consequently, incinerators must comply with high legal standards on air pollution and other environmental impacts in order to receive an environmental permit that is monitored and regulated in England by the Environment Agency.

All fundamental laws embody concepts and principles that ensure people are the ultimate source of public power and government policy. Hence communities are implicitly entitled to directly participate in the process of law-making. The principal purposes of legislation are to design, authorise, grant and regulate laws, and to monitor the best routes and means to address problem areas. This immediately draws the readers’ attention to the existing legislative controls that are currently in place for the policing of existing incineration facilities. 

Despite the risks of incinerator pollutants contributing to climate change, air quality issues, and potential harm to local ecosystems, UK legislation, including the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Waste Incineration Directive, primarily focuses on regulating emissions rather than preventing the generation of waste in the first place or promoting alternative waste management methods. To address these concerns, UK legislation must evolve to prioritise the reduction of waste and the promotion of sustainable alternatives. The government should invest more in waste prevention, recycling, and the development of technologies such as waste-to-energy systems that are more environmentally friendly than traditional incineration. Legislation should promote incentives for businesses and local authorities to adopt zero-waste strategies and circular economy principles, reducing the reliance on incinerators as the primary solution to waste disposal. 

Existing legislation does little to address the proximity of incinerators to residential areas or the long-term health effects on nearby populations. While current regulations require incinerators to meet certain emission standards, these standards are often outdated and insufficient to protect human health in the long term. Reforming UK legislation to incorporate more stringent health impact assessments before granting planning permission for new incinerators would be a significant move forward. These assessments should consider not only the potential emissions but also the cumulative health risks posed by other local industries or air pollution sources. Additionally, the government should strengthen monitoring to ensure that incinerators adhere to air quality standards and that the data collected is publicly accessible. This transparency would minimise the local communities’ fear of the risks they face and be able to hold operators accountable. 

Perhaps it is now appropriate to conclude with a quote from Aldous Huxley, the 20^th Century English writer-philosopher and author of the dystopian novel ‘Brave New World’, who stated:

‘Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.’

This statement was reiterated by that from a contemporary of Huxley, the French philosopher and political activist Jean Paul Sartre who asserted that:

‘The worst part of being lied to is knowing you weren’t worth the truth.’