The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued papers in the final days of President Joe Biden’s administration that emphasized the danger posed by so-called toxic forever chemicals, also known scientifically as per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, or PFAS.
Sewage sludge incinerator exhaust has been shown to include forever chemicals, which have been connected to cancer and other illnesses. However, the EPA claims that the data is restricted.
About 40% of Atlanta’s sewage sludge is burned at R.M. Clayton on the eastern bank of the Chattahoochee, according to Schere Rawles, a spokesman for the Atlanta Department of Watershed Management.
Credit: AJC/HYOSUB SHIN
Credit: AJC/HYOSUB SHIN
Researchers are still trying to figure out how to permanently eliminate substances. In the treatment of municipal wastewater, the few proven successful solutions are uncommon.
According to Dustin Hillis, a member of the Atlanta City Council whose district contains the R.M. Clayton facility, there isn’t a single, clean way to get rid of people’s garbage.
The solid byproduct of the wastewater treatment process is sewage sludge, sometimes referred to as biosolids. Human waste and scum from chemicals, including cleaning products, which can contain chemicals for a lifetime, are included in residential areas.
Sewage treatment facilities dry and chemically treat biosolids after separating them from liquids. Typically, the resultant waste is either sent to a landfill, burned, or used as fertilizer.
Landfills can release persistent pollutants into the air and rivers. Additionally, incinerator stacks can disperse them, and fertilizer can contaminate fields and rivers.
According to a study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, as of two years ago, around 200 wastewater treatment plants in the US were running incinerators, burning over 1 million tons of sludge annually. According to EPA estimates, 16% of the country’s sewage sludge was burned in 2022.
Leaders of local advocacy groups said that because so little is known about forever chemical emissions from the incinerators, neighbors of the sewage treatment plants in Atlanta and Cobb have not brought up the matter.
According to Gwen Smith, executive director of Community Health Aligning Revitalization, Resilience & Sustainability, an Atlanta-based organization that monitors additional emissions from R.M. Clayton, there must be a surge from the community that recognizes the issue and how it affects their health and well-being.
Since significant worry about sewage sludge incinerators is very new, almost all of them were built to reduce biosolid mass rather than forever chemicals. Thomas Borch, a professor at Colorado State University who studies forever chemicals in biosolids and oversees a lab for environmental and agricultural chemistry, says so.
Judy Jones, the director of the Cobb County Water System, highlighted studies showing that because incinerators run at high temperatures, they would be highly effective at eliminating (forever chemicals). However, specialists calculated that in order to permanently eliminate chemicals without producing other harmful molecules, incinerators would need to heat biosolids for extended periods of time and reach at least 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit.
The maximum operating temperature for Cobb’s proposed incinerators would be 1,459.5 F. According to Rawles, the incinerators in Atlanta run at 1,250.6 F.
However, according to Borch, operating hotter incinerators would result in higher energy requirements and the discharge of more dangerous greenhouse gases.
“Waste management is always difficult,” he said. After solving one issue, you start another.
Borch studies pyrolysis, an oxygen-free heating technique that has been demonstrated to permanently destroy compounds at temperatures lower than that of incinerators. The journal Water Environment Research reports that as of 2022, the technique was only being fully implemented at one wastewater treatment facility in the United States.
Feng Frank Xiao, an editor of the Journal of Hazardous Materials and a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Missouri, is attempting to permanently destroy chemicals at lower temperatures by incorporating additional materials, like soil or calcium, that aid in the conversion of the chemicals into innocuous inorganic fluorine.
We have very little financing right now, but we’re conducting a lot of significant research, Xiao stated.
According to the EPA, there are over 15,000 different types of everlasting chemicals, but only about 50 of them can be identified and measured.
Borch stated, “We don’t know all the (forever chemicals) because we don’t have the tools.” Researchers are also unsure of the level of toxicity of all the chemicals that have been detected.
The answer is not simple. To be honest, you need to do your own research, and I believe that’s what people are doing at the moment.
Strict restrictions on emissions of carbon monoxide, lead, mercury, and other pollutants from sewage sludge incinerators are imposed by the federal Clean Air Act. However, there are no rules governing the air emissions of permanent compounds.
Unless the regulatory procedure calls for it, local governments are unlikely to foot the bill for new equipment to destroy them, according to authorities and experts.
Last year, three states requested that the EPA impose restrictions on the emissions of some permanent compounds. However, the only federal permanent chemical restrictions that regulated the quantity in drinking water were withdrawn this year by the administration of President Donald Trump. Additionally, the government suggested easing additional regulations pertaining to air pollution.
Credit: AJC/HYOSUB SHIN
Credit: AJC/HYOSUB SHIN
Before laws tightened in 2016 and officials decided it would be too expensive to upgrade the incinerators to comply, Cobb County burned biosolids at R.L. Sutton for 34 years. Cobb’s expenses quadrupled after the county landfilled its biosolids, but landfill capacity is getting smaller. According to Jones, the incinerators are now the more affordable choice.
A $5.3 million contract with Crowder Construction Co. to design equipment modifications was approved by the County Commission last month.
In a letter to commissioners, the Vinings Village Homeowners Association, which represents the community around R.L. Sutton, asked that the incinerators be built to meet or beyond the most recent Clean Air Act regulations.
The organization also asked for an independent investigation of all emissions in the region, including the biosolids incinerators in northwest Atlanta, a waste transfer station, a hot mix asphalt facility, a Georgia Power plant with coal ash ponds, a Sterigenics plant that releases ethylene oxide, and more.
According to Melissa Johnson, president of the Vinings Village Homeowners Association, the possibility of cumulative effects on the environment and human health is a major worry.
