🚀 go-pugleaf

Dennis Nelson <innrcrcl@erols.com> wrote
> My response had to do with the people side of the pollution 
> equation not the toxins themselves.  Call it paranoid if you 
> wish but there are examples of deliberate, intentional 
> bypassing of filters in incinerator plants, during the night, 
> and blowing the crap out into the air just to save the cost 
> of cleaning the stacks and disposing of the filters properly.  

There is a broad range of incinerators; by the "fuel" they use,
including muncipal waste, medical waste, wood-waste, hazardous waste,
and sewage sludge; and by the type of incinerator, fluidized bed,
multiple-hearth, two-chamber designs; and all of these have different
types of control technology, ranging from simple afterburners to
electrostatic precipitators to venturi scrubbers and a whole bunch of
technology in between.

In MOST cases today, (especially in the more industrialized countries)
people do not bypass the air pollution control technology.  In many
(not all) of these cases you CANNOT bypass the control technology.  For
those systems with bypass vents, the bypass sytems themselves are
monitored, as are the components of the control systems.  For systems
burning hazardous waste, if the control technology is mandated by the
operating permit, then when the bypass system is activated the
incinerator must stop feeding hazardous waste (it actually trips an
automatic waste feed cutoff).

Most filters on incinerators nowadays are not "disposable" in the sense
you are talking about.  The closest thing to it nowadays is a fabric
filter baghouse, which undergoes cleaning on a continuous basis (some
are shaken, some are jet-pulsed, it varies).  The bags will wearout
over time, but these are replaced when needed, and most baghouses built
today are designed to facilitate these replacements.  

As always, there will be exceptions to the rule.  I am not a big fan of
wood-waste incinerators, they pollute more than any modern haz waste
incinerator because most do not have any refined type of control
technology (just cyclone separators).  There are other plants in the
USA today I would just as soon shut down.  Not because of the system,
or the waste, but because the personnel in charge of the plant seem to
show a certain lack of respect for a) what they are doing and b) the
people around them - and it shows in their operating record.  But each
source should be judged by its own merits.  You'll find that many other
sources may pollute worse than a nearby incinerator (unless you are
near one of the problem cases I mentioned).  And you'll find problem
sources of all kinds (a lot more than incinerators).
 
Now you will find that a lot of companies will "blow soot" at night. 
They are allowed to by law, and these are usually either a low-risk
incinerator or just simple boilers burning oil or natural gas.  Each
day the operators will trigger jets that clean out the pipes and ducts,
and for about 5 to 20 minutes a dark cloud of soot will come out of the
boiler.  Very common, and most companies would rather do that a night
than have to respond to 30 phone calls about something that is pretty
normal (to them) and something they are permitted to do.

> If I could trust all people to treat me the way I would treat them, 
> then I would not have such fears.  I think that a general attitude 
> of self-centered-ness, and "me first" contributes to a moral 
> decline and a societal loss of trust in institutions.

I do agree that the world seems to have entered a cycle of "me first"
that is disturbing to those of us more social-solution inclined.  We do
have some fairly decent laws on the books, clear guidance in a lot of
areas, and more importantly, public records on almost all industrial
sources.  On the other hand we continue to pollute in some heavy-handed
ways.  I am saying that you should turn your fears into respect for
where the system works, skepticism for where it doesn't, and if a
source bothers you - start looking into it, make them sweat.  It does
work - case in point Jonne Almond of Albemarle, North Carolina.  She
has been fighting Carolina Solite for years - Solite makes a
light-weight aggregate but use haz waste as part of their fuel source
in the kilns (BIF) - and were not to neat about it.  She has been
waging a real hard battle against them and is responsible for a lot of
their system improvements.  Solite recently tried to get an injunction
(SLAP suit) against her "rabble rousing" and they lost - again.  She
was probably pretty scared at first - but a little action goes a long
way.

-- 
Sam McClintock - *scmcclintock@ipass.net*
Director, En-Vision Inc., Raleigh, North Carolina
To respond by email, remove asterisks from email address

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