BACKGROUND Toxic waste sites contain a broad range of suspected or confirmed human carcinogens, and remain a source of concern to many people, particularly those living in the vicinity of a site. Despite years of study, a consensus has not emerged regarding the cancer risk associated with such sites. METHODS We examined the published, peer-reviewed literature addressing cancer incidence or mo...

The disposal and dumping of toxic waste is a matter of growing concern in developing countries, including South Africa. Frequently these countries do not possess access to gas chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS) for the determination of persistent organic pollutants (POPs). This publication describes an alternative approach to the investigation of toxic waste using compre...

Background: A biomaterial used in oral cavity should not become toxic, irritant, carcinogenic, and allergenic. Chitosan represents a new biomaterial in dentistry. Purpose: To examine the toxicity of chitosan from tiger prawn shell waste on cell culture with MTT assay. Methods: Chitosan with concentration of 0.25%, 0.5%, 0.75% and 1% was used in this experiment. Each sample was immersed on eppen...

This paper reviews documented environmental effects experience from the disposal of solid waste materials in the U.S. Selected case histories are discussed that illustrate waste migration and its actual or potential effects on human or environmental health. Principal conclusions resulting from this review were: solid waste materials do migrate beyond the geometric confines of the initial placem...

For the past three years, GROUP (Group for Research On Usage and Pragmatics) has been developing the VesselWorld system. In VesselWorld, three participants collaborate on remote workstations to remove barrels of toxic waste from a harbor. Each participant is the captain of a ship, and their joint goal is to remove all of the barrels from the harbor without spilling any toxic waste. Each ship ha...

The most commonly used technology for dealing with medical waste, till recently was an incinerator. Incinerator, when introduced was supposed to be a wonder technology. A technology that would get rid of loads of waste by burning it and would leave behind some ash, that could be dumped. However, instead of solving the problem of waste, it aggravated it. It only changed the biological problem in...

Rotary kilns are widely used for the thermal treatment of highly toxic waste. The waste (mostly organic compounds) is packed in barrels before it is fed in the kiln. Depending on the compound the heating inside the kiln leads to deflagrations of the barrels associated with an incomplete burnout. In this paper we present a new method to detect and track waste barrels in infrared image sequences ...