Building and landfill fires
Building and landfill fires - Vinyl Council Australia
| Open burning, for example, accidental building fires, of any material containing chlorine – including PVC and wood – results in dioxin emissions because of the poor combustion conditions in such fires. |
| The US Green Building Council’s Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee’s report on PVC notes that uncontrolled burning of PVC in landfill fires and building fires may release dioxins along with the burning of other materials. However there is a “wide range of uncertainty about these emissions”. The report authors also note “our risk estimates may overestimate [their emphasis] the actual cancer risk associated with dioxin emissions in the life cycles of products in this report, which is especially relevant to uncontrolled burning of PVC” (p.10). The issue is uncontrolled burning of materials and waste management strategies, not PVC. If you removed PVC from landfill waste, dioxin emissions will still be generated by landfill fires. In Australia, landfill fires are considered rare events. PVC constitutes less than 1% of landfill waste in Australia and estimates of dioxin emissions from burning PVC in landfill fires are therefore expected to be at the lower end of the uncertain data estimated for such events in the TSAC report. Dioxin emissions in Australia are relatively low by international standards, in part because practices such as ‘backyard burning’ have been made illegal. Accidental building fires where dioxins may be produced from timber and a range of materials burning, are a small contributor to overall dioxin emissions in Australia. |
