Alternatives to Incineration: There's More Than One Way to Remediate.

M &i We a InnovatIo Alternatives to Incineration: There's More Than One Way to Remediate Hazardous waste is everywhere. It comes from paints, motor oil, hair spray, household cleaners, automotive chemicals, and all kinds of toxic medical, industrial and military products. Most industrial processes-from which come cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, computers and garden pesticides-generate wastes that the EPA, acting under the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA), says can harm human health or the environment if not properly managed. As a waste-disposal technology, incineration has been around for about 500,000 years-an interesting spinoff of that timely Homo erectus discovery, fire. For millennia, incineration looked like a pretty good way to turn big piles of hazardous waste into air emissions, smaller piles of ash, and sometimes energy. And it's still a good idea. The EPA, for one, calls high-temperature incineration the best available technology for disposing of most hazardous waste. But incineration has drawbacks. When hazardous waste goes into an incinerator, it comes out as potentially harmful air emissions, although these emissions are strictly controlled , and as ash that's treated to meet EPA standards and then disposed of in an authorized landfill. It doesn't just vanish into thin air. "Hazardous waste incineration can be very safe," says Stan Cannon, spokesperson for the Washington, DC-based Environmental Technology Council, formerly the Hazardous Waste Treatment Council. "We're probably the most regulated industry in America, and the industry is very willing to work with EPA to hammer out the best, toughest standards the equipment can achieve." American industry alone produces 320 million tons of hazardous waste every year. According to the EPA, 288 million tons of this is wastewater managed in treatment systems or pumped into injection wells. Twenty-seven million tons of industrial and household hazardous wastes are disposed of by methods other than incineration, and 5 million tons are incinerated each year. "If an incinerator is designed well and run efficiently, it should be no problem," says William Suk, chief of the Chemical Exposures and Molecular Biology Branch at the NIEHS. "The problem is they're not designed that well, not run that efficiently, and they present a problem." The RCRA was enacted in 1976 to address widespread contamination caused by disposing of municipal and industrial solid waste. Managed by the EPA or authorized states, the RCRA seeks to reduce the generation of hazardous waste, and conserve energy and natural resources. In 1981, the EPA announced …