Garbage Burning: Environmental Impacts and Solutions

With developed society, there are lots of new companies or factories. They provide several products which is for human life, such as beverage, newspaper and electric devices. People utilize them in the life. When they are gone, they will become garbage. The consequence of these situations is that there are more and various types of garbage than ever before. It is a serious problem of how to deal with garbage. Unfortunately, there only are few ways to deal with garbage, for instance, landfill and burning. The popular method is burning. Burning can be used to generate electricity, and it is more advantageous than landfill. However the harmful effects of burning garbage are discussed in this essay.

First, burning garbage is harmful to human health. Since when garbage is burning, it will release many injurious components. It is easy to inhale damaging components if human live beside the location of burning garbage. “Burn barrel air emissions include carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitrogen oxides (NOx). Smaller amounts of more poisonous chemicals are commonly detected in the smoke: benzene, styrene, formaldehyde, polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs or 'dioxins'), polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDFs or 'furans'), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic.” These harmful components will be caused diseases such as Dioxin. It is essential materials for human who have cancer. Equally, human will decrease immune function if they contact with air which has Dioxin. Dioxin is also called an endocrine disrupter. It will affect the reproductive, developmental, and immunological problems in animal and human. Animal only need few Dioxin that it will died. There is no way for nature to produce Dioxin, it only creates by human activities which are chemical experiments or burning garbage. Similarly, formaldehyde also is one of the injurious components. If human skin exposure to certain doses of formaldehyde, it can cause allergic dermatitis. As same as allergic dermatitis, inhalation of formaldehyde in the respiratory tract may induce bronchial asthma. Therefore, it is really damaging if human contact with the air which has injurious components from burning garbage.

Secondary, burning garbage will create massive air pollution. Human give definition to the air pollution is that it is harmful to human. As same as before, burning garbage can produce Dioxin which is injurious to human. It also caused an air pollution. “Open burning of plastics also releases large amounts of toxic health and climate-damaging pollution including fine particles and black carbon, an important contributor to climate change.” The burning of garbage makes many harmful materials such as sulfur dioxide. It produces industrial smoke, which makes it difficult to breathe at high concentrations. It is the culprit of the famous London smog incident. When sulfur dioxide enters the atmosphere, it oxidizes to sulfuric acid to form acid rain in clouds, which is harmful to buildings, forests, lakes and soils. The combustion of garbage can form suspended particulate matter, also known as aerosol, which can directly damage the lungs as people breathe into the lungs.

On the other hand, burning garbage also affect the land. Burning garbage profoundly affect the soil, water and air quality. (Sullivan, 2014). The effect of acid rain on land is largely caused by the deterioration of the chemical properties of the soil. In the action of acid rain, the nutrient elements K, Na, Ca and Mg in the soil will be released and leached out with the rain. It means the soil loses nutrition from acid rain. It cannot provide nutrition for plants. Therefore, long-term acid rain will leach a large number of nutrient elements in the soil, resulting in a serious shortage of nutrient elements in the soil, making the soil become more barren. In addition, burning garbage also produce particulate matter. Particulate matter is easy to adhere to a variety of harmful substances, some are carcinogenic, and some can induce pollen allergy. Particulate matter deposition on the leaves of green plants interferes with the process of absorbing sunlight and carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen and water, thus affecting the health and growth of plants. Thick particulate matter concentration can affect the animal respiratory system, kill microorganisms, cause changes in the food chain, and then affect the entire ecosystem. Shielding the sun may change the climate, which also affects the ecosystem.

To sum up, as seen from the essay, burning garbage is destructive for human society since it creates diseases, air and soil pollution. With developed society, human will make much garbage than before. Solving the problem of dealing with garbage is very vital for human. The scientists need to offer new methods to deal with garbage.