PEER calls on EPA to report waste incinerators’ toxic output
The EPA's Toxics Release Inventory right now doesn't include chemical releases from waste incinerators. PEER and other groups are fighting to change that.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should finally start requiring waste incinerators to report their toxic chemical emissions to the agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), according to a rulemaking petition filed today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and the Energy Justice Network, with backing from more than 300 other environmental and public health organizations. Toxic emissions from waste incinerators are currently not catalogued in the TRI even though they are quite substantial.
The TRI rulemaking petition would cover incinerators that burn municipal solid waste (household and commercial trash), industrial waste, medical waste, and sewage sludge, as well as pyrolysis and gasification units, altogether approximately 400 facilities nationwide. The petition requires a formal response and addresses one of several demands that 274 groups made of the White House in a letter raising concerns about EPA’s history of favoring waste incineration. That October 2022 letter was never answered or acknowledged.