Don’t ignore the harm caused by burning trash

Letter writer Ashwani Gupta, who lives in College Park and not southwest Baltimore, dismisses concerns about the incinerator in the latter location with a reference to a general conclusion — not specific to that incinerator — that “wasteto-energy facilities have negligible contributions to local air pollution compared to other sources.”

Please take note, he makes a generalization that, if true, is true only on a relative basis (“Waste-to-energy is better than the alternatives,” Dec. 1).

Mr. Gupta ignores George Thurston’s study for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which estimated the medical costs of the plant’s pollution at $55 million annually for all states affected, with about $22 million annually in Maryland alone.

He also ignores information cited by Dan Morhaim of Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility in an article in the Baltimore Brew earlier this year that “the manufacture and incineration of plastic releases cadmium, chromium and benzene, ‘all known causes of cancer,’ as well as hydrogen cyanide, a corrosive irritant, and lead ‘which can enter the body via inhalation or ingestion and can cause permanent neurological damage in children.’ ”

It is natural that the concentration of these toxic chemicals will be highest at the point of release and thus relatively higher in the immediate neighborhood of the incinerator than farther away.

While it is clear that Mr. Gupta has valid concerns about landfills, he appears to focus much too narrowly on those concerns and to disregard the health consequences of incineration to people who live near incinerators. Sweeping other people’s problems under the rug is neither right nor practical in the long run.

We need a serious consideration of the waste we produce and the way we deal with it, not just an assurance that what we are doing is fine when it plainly is not.

— Katharine W. Rylaarsdam, Baltimore