Adage Incinerator will kill us!

Adage’s proposed incinerator will rain toxic pollutants on the people of Shelton and Mason County. ADAGE’s permit application for a biomass incinerator proposed for Hamilton County, Florida—a plant identical to the one proposed for Shelton—lists 52 Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAPs) that would be emitted from their incinerator. Lethal levels of particulate matter (PM) are listed, as well as dioxin, arsenic, mercury, lead, carbon monoxide, chloroform, formaldehyde, and sulfurous acid.

Air pollution controls will not protect us from lethal levels of Particulate Matter (PM) that can kill from a single exposure. Emissions of the smallest and possibly most dangerous PM are completely unregulated. Existing regulations for emissions of the next smallest category of PM are not sufficiently “stringent” to prevent “adverse cardiovascular effects”, according to the American Heart Association.

American Lung Association State of the Air – 2008 Report

(excerpts)

Ozone and particle pollution are the most widespread air pollutants—and among the most dangerous. Recent research has revealed new insights into how they can harm the body—including taking the lives of infants and altering the lungs of children.

Short-term Exposure Can Be Deadly

First and foremost, short-term exposure to particle pollution can kill.

Deaths can occur on the very day that particle levels are high, or within one to two months afterward. Particle pollution does not just make people die a few days earlier than they might otherwise—these are deaths that would not have occurred if the air were cleaner.

What Else Can Particles Do to Your Health?

Particle pollution diminishes lung function, causes greater use of asthma medications and increased rates of school absenteeism, emergency room visits and hospital admissions.

Other adverse effects can be coughing, wheezing, cardiac arrhythmias and heart attacks. According to the findings from some of the latest studies, short-term increases in particle pollution have been linked to:

1. death from respiratory and cardiovascular causes, including strokes;
2. increased mortality in infants and young children;
3. increased numbers of heart attacks, especially among the elderly and in people with heart conditions;
4. inflammation of lung tissue in young, healthy adults;
5. increased hospitalization for cardiovascular disease, including     strokes and congestive heart failure;
6. increased emergency room visits for patients suffering from acute     respiratory ailments;
7. increased hospitalization for asthma among children;
8. increased severity of asthma attacks in children;

What Is Particle Pollution?

Ever look at dirty truck exhaust? The dirty, smoky part of that stream of exhaust is made of particle pollution.

Particle pollution refers to a mix of very tiny solid and liquid particles that are in the air we breathe. Some are one-tenth the diameter of a strand of hair. Some are so small they can only be seen with an electron microscope. Because of their size, you can’t see the individual particles.

Our natural defenses help us to cough or sneeze larger particles out of our bodies. But those defenses don’t keep out smaller particles, those that are about one-seventh the diameter of a single human hair. These particles get trapped in the lungs, while the smallest are so minute that they can pass through the lungs into the blood stream, just like the essential oxygen molecules we need to survive.

Researchers categorize particles according to size, grouping them as coarse, fine and ultrafine. (1) Coarse particles fall between 2.5 microns and 10 microns in diameter and are called PM10-2.5. (2) Fine particles are 2.5 microns in diameter or smaller and are called PM2.5. (3) Ultrafine particles are smaller than 0.1 micron in diameter and are small enough to pass through the lung tissue into the blood stream, circulating like the oxygen molecules themselves. No matter what the size, particles can be harmful to your health.

Particle pollution can damage the body in ways similar to cigarette smoking. A recent review of the research on how particles cause harm found that the body responds to particles in similar ways to its response to cigarette smoke. These findings help explain why particle pollution can cause heart attacks and strokes.