ECO-COMMENARY

Put that fire out – NOW!

by The Green Hornet

Tuesday,  May 31, 2005

It was a beautiful tropical evening. As we sat on the porch watching the setting sun paint the sky in shades of red and gold, a gentle Cayman breeze stirred the air, and the magical scents of frangipani and Star of Bethlehem vine perfumed the dusk. It was an evening to savour until …

On that same gentle breeze came the foul smell of burning trash. The air took on the sharp tang of burning plastic that you can taste. Our eyes began to water, and our six-year-old granddaughter, Michelle, began to cough. It was time to retreat to the bland, dry “conditioned” air of the house. Close up the windows, close up the doors. Shut out the warm, scented tropical air which is one of the joys of living in the Cayman Islands.

It didn’t matter that we had asked our neighbour time and again to stop burning her garbage. It didn’t matter that the guys from Environmental Health who collect our garbage on a regular basis had also told her to stop. Our elderly neighbour has always burned her trash. She started when she was a child growing up in the 1930s – not that there was much to burn then, and there were certainly no plastics. But there was no garbage collection or landfill, either.

She stubbornly refuses to stop and says it’s her “right” to burn whenever and whatever she wants to. And she is not alone. Sometimes you can travel around the island and smell the fires burning. It usually happens when the wind is blowing away from the home of the person who is doing the burning. After all, they don’t want the smell invading their home, do they?

Many of the older generation wonder why so much fuss is made about the issue of burning, so it’s a good idea to look at why so many countries in the world have banned these outside fires. The reason is simple. The gases that are released when many materials are burned are toxic. They can kill us!

When wood (especially wood that has been pressure treated or painted to give it a longer life), household garbage, plastic, or leaves are burned, they produce smoke and release toxic gases. The smoke contains vapours and solid compounds suspended in the air called particulate matter. The particulate matter and toxic gases released during burning can be very irritating to people’s health. 

People who are exposed to these air pollutants can experience eye and nose irritation, breathing difficulty, coughing, and headaches. People with heart disease, asthma, emphysema, or other respiratory diseases are especially sensitive to air pollutants. The chance of human health effects occurring depends mostly on the concentration of air pollutants in people’s breathing zone (the air that’s breathed around the nose and mouth). 

The toxic chemicals released during burning include nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), and polycyclic organic matter (POMs). They sound complex, but remember the old adage we learned in school: “If you can’t pronounce it, don’t mess with it!” Particleboard and stained, painted, or wet wood release heavy metals and toxic chemicals such as dioxins when burned. Dioxins are known carcinogens: exposure to them causes cancer. As they are inhaled, they pass through the lungs into the bloodstream. The body then absorbs them in minute amounts. But these amounts never leave the body. They slowly accumulate until the body eventually reacts to the poison – usually by developing cancer.

The gases released by burning trash and wood often cause the kind of breathing irritation that happened to Michelle. Some of these gases are called aldehydes. Aldehydes and other organic gases irritate the eyes, nose, and throat, and are the reason why smoke burns one’s eyes. Smoke from wood and trash also contains tiny particles that can be breathed deep into the lungs. Once trapped in the lungs, these particles can cause cell damage, which can eventually make breathing extremely difficult. 

The small particles in wood smoke can aggravate heart conditions by preventing oxygen from reaching the tissues. Breathing difficulties, such as asthma, in both children and adults may worsen if they breathe too much smoke. Other health problems aggravated by burning include lung infections such as acute pneumonia and bronchitis. Allergies also can be worsened. 

Before scientists learned about the dangers of burning garbage, it was commonly burned at homes and landfills throughout the world. Backyard trash burning is especially harmful because it releases chemicals that are persistent in the environment, polluting our air, food, lakes, and streams. These chemicals get into the food chain, and humans, at the top of the food chain, ultimately absorb them.

A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) study found that residential trash burning from a single home could release more dioxins into the air than an industrial incinerator. 

Many countries have an outright ban on outdoor burning of the following materials:

• Wet cardboard, paper or other trash

• Plastics of any kind, including milk bottles and plastic bags 

• Oily substances, such as greasy rags and oil filters 

• Rubber products, including tires and hoses 

• Asphalt, including asphalt roofing shingles or tarpaper

• Particleboard, plywood, and treated, stained, painted, or wet wood.

It is time, for our health’s sake, that the Cayman Islands enforce the ban on the outside burning of these materials, whether they are burned during the day or at night.

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