DO WASTE INCINERATORS INDUCE ADVERSE RESPIRATORY EFFECTS - AN AIR-QUALITY AND EPIDEMIOLOGIC-STUDY OF 6 COMMUNITIES

The purpose of the study presented here was to simultaneously measure air quality and respiratory function and symptoms in populations livin g in the neighborhood of waste incinerators and to estimate the contri bution of incinerator emissions to the particulate air mass in these n eighborhoods. We studied the residents of three communities having, re spectively, a biomedical and municipal incinerator, and a liquid hazar dous waste-burning industrial furnace. We compared results with three matched-comparison communities. We did not detect differences in conce ntrations of particulate matter among any of the three pairs of study communities. Average fine particulate (PM(2.5)) concentrations measure d for 35 days varied across study communities from 16 to 32mug/m(3). W ithin the same community, daily concentrations of fine particulates va ried by as much as eightfold, from 10 to 80mug/m(3), and were nearly i dentical within each pair of communities. Direct measurements of air q uality and estimates based on a chemical mass balance receptor model s howed that incinerator emissions did not have a major or even a modest impact on routinely monitored air pollutants. A one-time baseline des criptive survey (n=6963) did not reveal consistent community differenc es in the prevalence of chronic or acute respiratory symptoms between incinerator and comparison communities, nor did we see a difference in baseline lung function tests or in the average peak expiratory flow r ate measured over a period of 35 days. Based on this analysis of the f irst year of our study, we conclude that we have no evidence to reject the null hypothesis of no acute or chronic respiratory effects associ ated with residence in an of the three incinerator communities.