Observations on the medical effects of the Piedmont-Jacksonville Landfill
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�Landfill hazard assessment is an increasingly important issue at the national and international level. Each state within the United States has a similar goal of determining those landfill sites that pose an environmental, ecological, and/or human health threat. (Hagemeister, Jones, Woldt 248).� The United States required that all unregulated landfills had to meet certain criteria or close by October 1993 under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. Since this law was confirmed over a decade ago, do those whom monitor landfills still enforce it? Also, since different states regulate this code individually, how strictly are the rules being enforced? It is understood that in the past, society did not know the extent to which the environment affected us, but with advances in science and technology we now have a better understanding of those impacts. We now know of the many environmental mistakes of the past and how to prevent these mistakes in our future. However, it does require a certain conscience to keep us alert and remind us how much the environment around us affects us. Early efforts to dispose of waste consisted of digging holes in the earth and dumping municipal, industrious, and toxic waste into them. These holes had no liners. No one imagined that materials placed in a hole could migrate and cause potential health hazards. People also had to cope with odors, flies, and rats associated with these open pits. To deal with these latter problems people decided that the garbage needed to be covered. However, the choices of dirt to cover the landfills were not adequately thought out. Older landfills are built on and capped with permeable silts that can allow leaching into the ground water. By chance, there may have been a few landfills built on and covered with impermeable clay. As time went on and environmental science improved, we learned of better ways to handle solid waste. Today landfills are carefully designed with many liners on impermeable soils to keep leachate waste from reaching the ground water. Although the new landfills are greatly improved and heavily controlled, there are concerns about old landfills. Has the waste in the old landfills been transported? Are these old landfills near any drainage pipes or sources of water? What kinds of toxins have been produced from the aged garbage? In the spring of 2003, I proposed these questions and more for a particular landfill, the Piedmont -Jacksonville Landfill located at 164 Piedmont-Jacksonville Rd, Piedmont, Alabama. After reviewing literature about health and nearby landfills, I became curious about the health risks that may have been involved for residents living near the Piedmont-Jacksonville landfill.
Problem Statement
Methodology
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The following questions were included in the survey:
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The data gathered by the survey was then compared to national cancer and respiratory averages obtained from the American Cancer Society and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. The American Cancer Society did not give a prevalence of cancer national average, but rather a number of estimated cases for 2003. This number calculated with the U.S. Census Bureau�s 2003 population figure has given the national average of cancer approximately 3%. There was not a basic statistic for respiratory disease, but particular types were broken down in the Morbidity and Mortality: 2002 Chart Book on Cardiovascular, Lung and Blood Diseases written by physicians and researchers at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Since the charts for prevalence in asthma, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis were broken down to age, race and gender, a percentage calculation had to be performed. The calculated averages are as follows: asthma 4%, emphysema ages forty five to sixty five 3.5%, chronic bronchitis over age eighteen 4.6%. The National Institute of Health gave a 9% figure for chronic allergies. The next task involved taking all gathered data and performing a statistical analysis with Minitab software. Enclosed are the charts that express: the distance in kilometers of each residence and answers given in the survey, descriptive statistics including mean, mode, median, and standard deviation, the tally for discrete variables, percentage comparison within the study population, and a hypothesis test for one proportion.
Review of Literature Another article pertaining to this study is �Talking Trash: The Economic and Environmental Issues of Landfills�. This was written by Taylor for Environmental Health Perspectives in August 1999. The paper is about the economics of new Subtitled D landfills. It also talks about the amount of trash our population is producing and the risks that the old landfills pose. This article asks where we should put all of these new large landfills. To help with problems of landfills, this paper proposes solutions using new technologies to help �accelerate waste decomposition.� Finding a way to decompose trash faster would be beneficial to all. It would help the environment and the economics of landfills; however, the solution is not that simple and there has been no change in policy to reflect the proposals in the paper. The article entitled �Exploratory Analysis of Respiratory Illness Among Persons Living Near a Landfill� written by Berger, Jones and White in the Jan. 2000 edition of Journal of Environmental Health was a valuable resource for this study. The article was written because residents living near �one of the largest landfills in the U.S.� complained of respiratory problems. The authors� goal was to find a correlation between symptoms of the landfill. The researchers used a method of selecting the right communities, conducting a community outreach and collecting data. �The results of this assessment indicate that a fairly large number of Staten Island residents experience respiratory-related symptoms and conditions.� The researchers concluded that since the results indicated health problems that were related to landfill then further investigations would need to be done. Another journal similar to this study is �Assessment of Impact on Health of Residents Living Near the Nant-y-Gwyddon Landfill Site� was written by Fielder and Poon-King for the British Medical Journal in Jan. 2000. The purpose of this paper was to compare the populations living near the landfill and find any indications of health risks. The methods they used included obtaining the recorded complaints from two separate areas in proximity to the landfill and then measuring mortality rates, hospital admission rates and low birth-weight in infants in those areas. The studies showed an increase in congenital malformations, but this �predated the opening of the landfill.� Their only real finding was that �hydrogen sulfide and benzene were found in some air samples.� The article concluded that more research would be needed in order to find the exact elements causing congenital malformations. In the Journal of Environmental Engineering in April 1996, the article titled �Hazard Ranking of Landfills Using Fuzzy Composite Programming� by Hagemeister, Jones and Woldt gives different methodologies for assessing landfill hazards. The different themes of assessment include the Program Priority System, Hazard Ranking System, waste-soil-site interaction matrix method and the Standard Risk Assessment Protocol model. The researchers indicate �that none of the methodologies allow for uncertainties associated with the input variables.� The objectives of this paper are to develop a �hazard assessment screening tool� that include more data, incorporate uncertainties, provide flexibility in landfill parameters and be used to rank several different sites at a lower cost. The researchers decided to apply the fuzzy composite programming �to aggregate the individual hazards into a final overall hazard for a site.� This method allowed for first level indicators to be selected to lessen the time it takes to collect and analyze specific data. The Level I indicators the researchers looked for were: �volume of waste, first year of operation, waste boundaries, adjacent land use, cover material, leachate generation, bottom liner material, liquid disposal, waste type disposed, landfill emissions, wind/city relation, distance to city, size of the city,� and so on. The conclusion is that this methodology includes the things that the researchers wanted in an assessment; however, it is �not an alternative to a full-scale evaluation.� |
