Incinerator pollution

SIR – The Government’s plans to set a gold standard in air quality are incongruous with its wishes to increase municipal waste incineration.

I have recently examined plans for what would be Britain’s largest municipal waste incinerator – equivalent, in combustion terms, to about half a million wood stoves – at Rookery South in Bedfordshire. The plans were nodded through by the Environment Agency despite alarming deficiencies. For example, PM1 and ultrafine particles – now recognised as being the most damaging to health – were ignored in the permit. Air pollution modelling also covered a derisory 15km radius rather than the 100km that would be scientifically appropriate for such a large facility.

We may all agree that depositing waste in landfill has reached its limits, but decisive action to reduce the amount of waste generated – rather than letting incinerators proliferate – is surely the answer.

Jeremy Ramsden

Honorary professor of nanotechnology, University of Buckingham