Landfills Pose Minimal Risks, Despite Claims to the Contrary
Landfills are politically unpopular because many citizens fear the public health risks. But estimates of landfill risks—based on EPA assumptions that “maximally exposed” individuals face a cancer risk of one in a million—reveal that the risks to public health are not significant. When compared with most other forms of business and activities that we experience in daily living, the risks posed by landfills to the surrounding communities are miniscule.
For example, a study conducted by Jennifer and Kenneth Clinton demonstrates the very low level risk possed by landfills. Using EPA techinques for estimating risk they found that 60 percent of landfills pose a one in 10 billion risk; 6 percent pose a 1-in a billion risk; and 17 percent pose 1-in-a million risk. Modern landfills pose lowest of these risks. As a point of comparssion, the following activities post a one in a million cancer risk: smoking 1.4 cigarettes; drinking half liter of wine; living two days in New York or Boston; traveling 6 minutes by canoe; traveling 10 miles by bicycle; traveling 300 miles by car; flying 1,000 miles by jet one chest x-ray; eating 40 tablespoons of peanut butter.
Sign up for the OV Daily Newsletter
OV Social
Minimal risks? Read about the tragedy of Love Canal at
http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/lovecanal/01.htm
Read even more about it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal
There was no 'minimal risk' for the former residents of Love Canal. The cost to the public has been enormous.
M. Glass
I am disinclined to agree with an EPA assessment (from 1990 no less) simply because they are heavily invested in the landfill approval process. Second, the risk associated with landfills is not the cancer exposure they present. It is the contamination of underground aquifers rendering drinking water unpotable. Landfill membranes all leak eventually. Landfills are nothing less than mine tailings left to poison the future.
And yes, they are a wealth of resources buried. When future anthropologists of the next species colonizing the Earth dig up our landfill they will conclude that we were a frivolous race indeed to destroy our own water supply with buried wealth caches that we could not longer recover, especially when they were needed to save our species from extinction.
Certainly, many consumers fear the health risks of our landfills, however, health risk is only a minor consideration in the issue of recycling. The primary issue is the reuse of finite resources. Even if the landfills were 100% safe to the environment, the issue of dwindling finite resources would remain.
I believe most consumers are concerned about the raping of what beauty is left of our natural environment for the sake of their own lives and the lives of their children.
No one I've spoke to on the issues of recycling and the environment are primarily concerned over the health risks of landfills. This argument is misdirection.