Contents:
- Medical Video: Burning Garbage: Unhealthy, Unsafe and Against-the-Law
- What are the chemicals contained in the smoke resulting from waste combustion?
- What are the dangers of burning litter?
- So, how to manage garbage properly and safely?
Medical Video: Burning Garbage: Unhealthy, Unsafe and Against-the-Law
Burning garbage is one of the bad habits of Indonesian people that is difficult to eliminate. This method is considered a shortcut to get rid of stinky garbage stacks that can be a nest of disease. In fact, burning garbage will actually bring up new problems for the health of the people around. Here's the explanation.
What are the chemicals contained in the smoke resulting from waste combustion?
Reporting from Scientific American, about 40 percent of waste or equivalent to 1.1 billion tons of waste in the world is burned in the open. When you burn waste, various chemicals contained in it will expand into the air and trigger pollution.
A number of chemicals from the smoke of waste combustion is a threat to health. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, carbon monoxide and formaldehyde (formalin) are the two main combustion substances that trigger the most respiratory diseases.
Clarified by Christine Wiedinmyer, a researcher from the National Center for Atmosperic Research, 29 percent of the smoke from combustion contains small metal particles that can penetrate directly into the lungs. In addition, 10 percent of the pollutant content from waste contains mercury and the other 40 percent contains polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PHA).
Combustion smoke also contains many other invisible materials such as hydrogen chloride, hydrogen cyanide, benzene, styrene, arsenic, lead, chromium, benzo (a) pyrene, dioxin, furans, and PCBs. All these chemicals are clearly not for human consumption because they endanger health.
What are the dangers of burning litter?
When rubbish starts to accumulate in the trash can or backyard, you might think of burning it immediately so it doesn't pile up more. Without realizing it, this is where you begin to poison yourself, your family, and other people in the environment around you.
Chemicals from smoke burning waste can not only be directly inhaled by humans, but also can be attached to objects that are around it. For example trees, plants in the garden, land surface, and so on.
Even though the fire has been extinguished, you can still be exposed to chemicals from combustion waste when you eat fruits and vegetables that are planted in the soil exposed to combustion ash. Be careful, children can also be exposed when they touch objects in the park that are exposed to the smoke of combustion.
If these chemicals continue to be inhaled by humans, then this can cause coughing, shortness of breath, eye infections, headaches, and dizziness. If left unchecked, this condition can increase the risk of lung disease, nervous system disorders, heart attacks, and certain types of cancer.
The danger of burning garbage does not stop there. Dioxin content from plastic waste has carcinogenic properties and can disrupt the hormone system in the body. These toxins can also accumulate in body fat and are absorbed by the baby's placenta in pregnant women. So, it is very clear that burning garbage has a negative effect on the health of all people.
So, how to manage garbage properly and safely?
Now, you already know the danger of burning garbage for the environment and health. From now on, immediately stop these bad habits and move to a safer way to manage waste.
The following are some simple tips that can help reduce the amount of waste without having to burn it.
- Avoid waste. The more household products you buy, the more garbage you will incur. So, buy enough food or household products and choose the product with the simplest packaging.
- Reuse. Examples are turning used cans into plant pots or piggy banks, used clothes into rags or mats, and so on.
- Recycle. Use used items that can still be used and recycled into new, economical and useful items. For example, making baskets from a collection of coffee packs, newspaper waste into recycled paper, and so on.
- Make compost. Instead of burning it, make leftover food ingredients and leaves into compost for your plants.
- Dispose of trash properly. Instead of hurrying to burn it, throw garbage in the final dump. In fact, there are now many places that facilitate recycling of household plastic into more useful household products.
