Families Against Cancer & Toxics

Plasma converter has much to be considered

Dear Editor:

I am writing with my concerns about the proposal to build a "plasma converter" in Cochise County.

On the surface the idea is really exciting. Garbage is recycled into fuel. The plasma converter industry representatives promise absolutely no toxic output at all, not from toxic air emissions nor toxic solid waste. 

But in truth, this is an incinerator in disguise.

The industry reps claim that the solid waste that is left after the plasma conversion is no longer toxic. But that is silly. The converter might break a lead battery down into all its atoms, but the ~20 pounds of elemental lead atoms in a car battery will still be ~20 pound of elemental lead atoms after the plasma conversion process. It would require nuclear fission or nuclear fusion to change the lead atom into something else, and fission or fusion requires the force of an atomic bomb. What is especially troubling is that the industry reps plan to sell the solid waste byproduct to the construction and abrasives industry. I sure hope that the next time I buy sandpaper I'm not getting a product made of lead atoms and other toxic substances!

The industry reps are adamant that their gasification process has no toxic air emissions, but they quietly mention that the generator does have emissions. When they are generating electricity from such a plant then the waste gases fire up the generator, but then the waste gas emissions go into the air from that process. They are just sending the emissions out of a different pipe!

One fact that the industry reps have not been forthcoming with is that once a commercial waste facility is built, waste can and will come from outside the county. It is a violation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, unfortunately, to ban the importation of waste to a commercial facility. And waste facilities always need more waste to be viable. A good example is a garbage incinerator in Stanislaus County, California, where residents were told for years that the incinerator was for local garbage, but where it was recently revealed that they have been taking a large amount of waste from across the state and from other states.

I worry that allowing this private company to build this new type of incinerator in will open a Pandora's Box of health trouble for the people who live and breathe in Cochise County. The industry representatives have not supplied actual emissions data from either of the two garbage-to-energy plasma converter plants that exist in the world (Poland and Japan).

Also keep in mind there is no such plant in operation in the U.S. for solid
waste. Does Cochise County really want to be the first?

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Terry Nordbrock
Mom of Henry and Linus, a 6-year-old Tucson kid with leukemia
Co-founder of FACT, Families Against Cancer & Toxics
http://familiesagainstcancer.org
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