An incinerator for South Tipperary
Whenever I saw an incinerator planned for Dublin or Cork I have always been rather casual about my response, and have thought that the people campaigning against them were some type of extremists who might as well have been trying to stop the tide. And so when I heard that one was planned for South Tipperary, I was inclined to shrug and ignore it. However, as anyone in the area will know, a furore has been caused by the current proposition. 
Following questions by a number of friends (who seem to think that I have some green credentials), I decided to see what I could find out. Because what was required was good impartial information, the search began at the United States Environmental Protection Agency website. And what a lot of information they have. Thousands of pages of information, derived from over five thousand reports written by scientists from all over the world. Such an abundance of information was too much to digest. Then luckily I stumbled upon a summary report that is currently being drafted. Only two hundred pages long, and kept simple. And better still, there’s even a summary of the summary.
And what was revealed? Well let’s start at the beginning: Dioxins.
Dioxins are a group of chemicals that cause all sorts of things to happen to living tissue. Among the effects documented are various types of cancer, disruption of hormone levels (testosterone and oestrogen), onset of diabetes, links with heart disease and hypertension and so on.
Even more important are the tiny quantities of dioxin that cause problems. In multiple studies on laboratory rats, a single dose of about a billionth of a gram to the mother has been shown to cause abnormalities in the sexual development of her young.
So there is no doubt that exposure to dioxins is dangerous. But how are we exposed?
Humans take in dioxin in many ways, but by far the most important is via our food intake. This is because dioxins are fat soluble, and not readily excreted. Thus, livestock take in dioxin when they feed, and multiply its concentration a hundred fold. Then when we eat meat, fish, eggs or dairy produce, we multiply its concentration a hundred fold again. The net effect is that a tiny amount of dioxin on the ground from which animals feed, becomes significant by the time we have consumed it. What’s even worse, a nursing mother will multiply the amount given to her baby even further, with the result that breast-fed babies are exposed to more dioxin than their bottle-fed counterparts.
So how much dioxin do we take in?
The good news is that Ireland has the lowest dioxin levels in the EU, and that our food is the safest available. Irish intake levels of dioxin are presumably lower than those in the US and Europe. 
The current average intake of dioxin (for a person living in the US) is 80 picograms per day. This is considered to present “minimal risk” of cancer. However, studies have shown that there is very little margin of error, and that levels only slightly above this should be a cause for concern. Some studies suggest that for a 20% rise in dioxin, an extra 1 in 100 people will die of cancer. 
Also, the EPA states that levels to which the general population is currently exposed (both in the US and in Ireland) are likely to cause adverse health effects, though probably not cancer.
And where does dioxin come from?
In the United States in 1995, almost half of all dioxins originated from the burning or incineration of waste. This was better than in 1987, when total levels were twice as high. Notably, it does not matter what kind of waste is burned, as it all gives off similar amounts of dioxin. I have not been able to find any figures for sources in Ireland, but given that our population density is almost ten times that in the US, we could expect much higher levels than there if we were to incinerate a similar proportion of our waste.
With regard to the South Tipp incinerator, if it burns 1000 tons per day, and its operation performance is similar to the US average, then we can expect an output of 0.01 grams of dioxin per day. Not a lot, but still a million times more than is known to affect us. It does seem strange that we are now just considering incineration, at a time when the most developed countries are trying to lower their dioxin emissions.
There are alternatives: waste minimisation and recycling for conventional waste, hydroxyl treatment for meat & bone meal, and though they may not be simpler, they are much safer. And while they will not treat all the waste, it’s clear that whatever we want to do with the remainder, incineration should not be considered as an option.

For more information see the website noincinerationsouthtipp.com

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