Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change. Pollution can take the form of any substance or energy. Pollutants, the components of pollution, can be either foreign substances/energies or naturally occurring contaminants.
Polychlorinated dibenzodioxins (PCDDs), or simply dioxins, are a group of long-lived polyhalogenated organic compounds that are primarily anthropogenic, and contribute toxic, persistent organic pollution in the environment.
Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of substances contained in waste materials. Industrial plants for waste incineration are commonly referred to as waste-to-energy facilities. Incineration and other high-temperature waste treatment systems are described as "thermal treatment". Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat. The ash is mostly formed by the inorganic constituents of the waste and may take the form of solid lumps or particulates carried by the flue gas. The flue gases must be cleaned of gaseous and particulate pollutants before they are dispersed into the atmosphere. In some cases, the heat that is generated by incineration can be used to generate electric power.
Times Beach is a ghost town in St. Louis County, Missouri, United States, 17 miles (27 km) southwest of St. Louis and 2 miles (3 km) east of Eureka. Once home to more than two thousand people, the town was completely evacuated early in 1983 due to TCDD contamination, formerly the largest civilian exposure to the compound in the history of the United States.
Barry Commoner was an American cellular biologist, college professor, and politician. He was a leading ecologist and among the founders of the modern environmental movement. He was the director of the Center for Biology of Natural Systems and its Critical Genetics Project. He ran as the Citizens Party candidate in the 1980 U.S. presidential election. His work studying the radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing led to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
A waste-to-energy plant is a waste management facility that combusts wastes to produce electricity. This type of power plant is sometimes called a trash-to-energy, municipal waste incineration, energy recovery, or resource recovery plant.
Environmental pollution in Japan has accompanied industrialization since the Meiji period. One of the earliest cases was the copper poisoning caused by drainage from the Ashio Copper Mine in Tochigi Prefecture, beginning as early as 1878. Repeated floods occurred in the Watarase River basin, and 1,600 hectares of farmland and towns and villages in Tochigi and Gunma prefectures were damaged by the floodwater, which contained excessive inorganic copper compounds from the Ashio mine. The local breeders led by Shōzō Tanaka, a member of the Lower House from Tochigi appealed to the prefecture and the government to call a halt to the mining operations. Although the mining company paid compensatory money and the government engaged in the embankment works of the Watarase River, no fundamental solution of the problem was achieved.
The Ministry of Environment is the South Korea branch of government charged with environmental protection. In addition to enforcing regulations and sponsoring ecological research, the Ministry manages the national parks of South Korea. Its headquarters is in Sejong City.
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of waste, or the processing of waste into a fuel source. WtE is a form of energy recovery. Most WtE processes generate electricity and/or heat directly through combustion, or produce a combustible fuel commodity, such as methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels, often derived from the product syngas.
Chemetco was formerly one of the largest United States refiners of copper from recycled or residual sources.
The Jinkanpo Atsugi Incinerator was a waste incinerator located in Ayase, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan, operated by Enviro-Tech. It began operation in the 1980s and was closed in 2001. The incinerator was near Naval Air Facility Atsugi, a base manned partly by several thousand United States Navy members and their families.
Von Hernandez is a leading environmental activist from the Philippines. He was Executive Director of Greenpeace Southeast Asia (GPSEA) from 2008 to 2014, where he led the environmental group's programs and operations in the Southeast Asian region. Prior to that, he served as Campaigns Director for the organization, and was responsible for driving the group's campaigns in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines on a number of issues including climate change, forests, sustainable agriculture and toxics pollution. Currently, he serves as Development Director for Greenpeace International.
Dioxins and dioxin-like compounds (DLCs) are a group of chemical compounds that are persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in the environment. They are mostly by-products of burning or various industrial processes or, in the case of dioxin-like PCBs and PBBs, unwanted minor components of intentionally produced mixtures.
The Ecology Center is a membership-based nonprofit environmental organization based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It works at the local, state and national levels on environmental justice, health, waste, and community issues. It was formed after the first Earth Day in 1970 by community activists in Ann Arbor. Since its founding, it has run demonstrations and campaigns to promote recycling, health care, education, and awareness about healthy foods and products.
The triangle of death is an area approximately 25 km northeast of the city of Naples in the Province of Naples, Campania, Italy, that comprises the comuni of Acerra, Nola and Marigliano. This area contains the largest illegal waste dump in Europe due to a waste management crisis in the 1990s and 2000s.
Trashed is an environmental documentary film, written and directed by British film-maker Candida Brady. It follows actor Jeremy Irons as he investigates the global scale and impact of humanity's modern wasteful consumerism and pollution. The film is a call for urgent action to resolve the issue of existing deposits and drastically reduce our consumption towards sustainable levels and zero waste, but also demonstrates how this is already being achieved successfully in many communities around the world.
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, formed in 1997, is a multiracial grassroots organization based in San Francisco that works with low-income and working class urban, rural, and indigenous communities. It runs campaigns in the United States to build grassroots networks, and advocate for social justice.
Environmental issues in Toronto encompasses all those concerns and opportunities presented by the environment of Toronto. Many are harmful effects, such as the pollution of air and water, while others are factors influenced by urban infrastructures such as highways and public transportation services. As a result of the city's large population, substantial waste is produced annually.
The anti-incinerator movement in China refers to the series of environmental protests that have occurred in opposition to China's numerous planned and operating industrial waste incinerators. The construction of these waste-to-energy facilities, which has prompted the ensuing protest movement, operates as part of China's ongoing efforts to restructure its waste disposal system in regard to its status as the largest producer of municipal solid waste worldwide since 2004. Described by some as being a new type of NIMBY protest, the roots of the anti-incinerator movement can be traced back to the early 1990s, following the introduction of China's first generation of incinerator plants. The movement, however, began in earnest with the benchmark 2006 Liulitun protest taking place in Beijing.
The Delaware Valley Resource Recovery Facility is a trash incineration plant located in Chester, Pennsylvania. The waste-to-energy plant, which incinerates waste to generate power, was built and operated by Westinghouse from 1991 to 1997. It is currently operated by Covanta. a Morristown, New Jersey-based publicly-traded industrial waste company, and has been criticized for the level of pollution it produces. The plant has the largest capacity of any waste-to-energy plant in the United States.
