EPA takes steps to require MSW incinerators to report toxic chemical emissions

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will start a process to require municipal waste incinerators to report their toxic chemical emissions to the agency’s Toxics Release Inventory, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), Silver Spring, Maryland, and the Energy Justice Network (EJN), Philadelphia.

The EPA decision comes in response to a rulemaking petition by PEER and EJN on April 3, 2023.

EPA agreed to commence rulemaking to cover facilities that incinerate municipal solid waste (MSW), as well as a portion of the nation’s medical waste incinerators, commercial and industrial incinerators and pyrolysis and gasification facilities where waste incineration is the facility’s primary business. EPA estimates this rulemaking will cover 60 facilities, PEER says.

Facilities that incinerate hazardous waste are currently required to report information on their toxic releases to the TRI.

“EPA’s proposed action will close a big data gap about our exposure to harmful chemicals,” PEER Executive Director Tim Whitehouse says. “We are prepared to do everything we can to ensure that the Trump administration moves forward with these proposed rules."

PEER says the agency denied the groups’ request to include all medical waste and sewage sludge incinerators, commercial and industrial solid waste incinerators, other solid waste incinerators and pyrolysis and gasification units in the TRI, choosing to exclude facilities where incineration is a “minor aspect of the overall activities taking place at the facility.”

The TRI currently contains information on 794 chemicals in 33 categories managed by more than 23,000 industries. Community members can use TRI to learn how industrial facilities manage chemicals and what those facilities are doing to prevent pollution. The TRI was created as part of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act, enacted in 1986.

“Waste incinerators are typically among the largest industrial air polluters in their cities and counties, yet this info has been invisible in this popular disclosure tool,” EJN Executive Director Mike Ewall says, noting that minority communities are most at risk.