Global Warming, Health and Methane Gas
78Decomposing Poisons Underground
The adage, "What you don't know can't hurt you," anything but true when it comes to America's improperly abandoned landfills. Uncapped and unlined, such landfills spew out methane gas: a threat to human health and a documented factor in global warming.
Methane is a greenhouse gas of such interest to science that researchers have drilled 2 mile long ice cores in glaciers to study methane in relation to climate change in eons past.
If you've ever seen a dead animal by the side of the road, its bloated belly is filled with methane gas. When organic material - garbage, dead leaves, dead anything - breaks down, methane is emitted. According to the CDC's Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (www.atsdr.cdc.gov), "Decomposing waste in landfills generates gases containing many chemicals that transport through soils and may eventually be released to the surface," posing a risk to earth's atmosphere, and a potential health risk to nearby residents.
Most communities preferred to deposit accumulated refuse some distance from residential areas, so America's "green" space (farm country) is dotted with forgotten landfills. Those that predate the EPA (1972) were monitored by state and local health departments - often inconsistently. Once trenches in these dumps were full, such landfills were abandoned, but the stuff buried in them continued to decay. Though "licensed" to accept household trash only, not uncommon was illegal dumping of hazardous waste such as:
- Chemicals from factories.
- Radioactive wastes of unknown origin.
- Toxic heavy metals like arsenic.
Any sandy subsoils allowed these poisons to migrate down into underground rivers known as aquifers, posing a risk to the groundwater in drawn up through farm wells, and discharging into surface water: lakes, creeks, rivers. Some of the pollution became airborne, migrating up through the ground as gases, chiefly methane.
Some such landfills were later equipped with methane "monitors." As methane gas was emitted, the monitors burned it off.
Just how much methane permeates the air above the forgotten landfills that have no monitors is rarely known. One rural "improperly abandoned" Ohio landfill had never even been "capped" with clay, was not lined, and has no methane monitors. At the landfill that replaced it, methane monitors burn all night long. According to the US EPA (www.epa.gov), methane in soil can travel through field tiles into basements of adjacent homes, creating an explosion hazard.
Researchers today study ice cores and ocean sediments in search of methane clues, but as yet, no study has thoroughly inventoried America's improperly abandoned rural landfills.
Each global warming report is increasingly dire: As glaciers melt, gases like methane trapped in the permafrost are released, doing more harm to earth's atmosphere. Rising oceans risk swamping the nesting grounds for six of seven species of Caribbean turtles. Rising ocean temperatures spell doom for fragile coral reefs. The World Wildlife Federation (http://www.worldwildlifefederation.org/) says violent rainstorms and clearcut mangrove forests may spell doom for the world's largest population of wild Bengal tigers. On a human scale, hundreds of millions of people could be without food and water due to changing climates.
Right now, unremediated landfills that discharge their pollution into nearby rivers may be contaminating treated drinking water sources in downstream cities. Such buried poisons could be the source of area cancer deaths, birth defects and more.
Cleaning up trash along the nation's highways makes America look better. More important is cleaning up America's unseen trash - chemicals and other contaminants buried underground.
Methane's Risks
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Either way, unlined, uncapped improperly abandoned landfills poison the environment, impact wildlife and threaten human health.
this website was really boring
you tol more about methane gas.....but the heading???
yes indeed global warming is an alarming issue.Perfect article depicting the fact. You may also refer to http://hubpages.com/hub/The-World-is-getting-hot-- ,when i have also discussed about this creeping issue.
I wonder how the methane under the arctic ice got there. Could it be natural? hmmm. Maybe Nixon hauled it all up there and burried it with the help of Ronald Reagan of course. The arrogance of the environmentalist to think that we could have such an impact on the worlds natural cycles just boggles the mind. When I was growing up we were scared into thinking the next Ice age was comminig and then came GLOBAL WARMING, now they have changed the tune to Climate Change. We should all be good stewards of the earth but these people are over the top when they try to tell us we are causing the Polar Bear to become extinct. The fact is over 90 percent of all species are extinct and we didn't cause any of them to fade into the sunset. God's world is bigger than us and we should not give ourselves so much credit.
this is gay
"Maybe Nixon hauled it all up there" hmm could br. I know politicians give me gas! And they are full of hot air.
The fact is, people need to stop throwing so much stuff away. Like old Cell phones and laptops when they could make some money off them. Just go to http://www.yagoodle.com
Thanks, Carol. Some good stuff here!
Methane is actually a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but doesn't last nearly as long in the atmosphere. The bad news is that CO2 is the major breakdown product of methane!
It's also worth noting that there are now over 400 landfill sites in the US which actually use the methane for energy, rather than "flaring" it off into the atmosphere.
And then there are those, like the one on County Road 90 in Seneca County, Ohio, that have no liner, no cap, no flares, no NPDES (pollution discharge) permit -- where chemical, radioactive and other waste from industry, medical facilities and more were buried in now-rusted barrels for over 30 years.
No effort has been made to find the leading edge of the groundwater pollution plume in the sand and gravel acquifer. Contaminants confirmed in this landfill include Strontium 90, the element that resulted in the ban on atmospheric testing of the atom bomb after Sr 90 (a known carcinogen) was found in cow's milk, and later, the baby teeth of children.
Seneca County volunteer firefighters have informed Ohio EPA they would not have the resources to address a landfill fire should buried oils and other wastes combust.
Such landfills are scattered all across the country in untillable ravines, which are often drainage courses to rivers. In this case, the Sandusky -- one of four major feeder rivers to Lake Erie, one of the world's largest freshwater resources.
A clean up, though, is far beyond the means of the city that owns it (Tiffin), where most "responsible parties" (those whose waste is buried there) are long since gone.
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Ow. That's a really terrible picture.
I hope "concerned" came back to read it. I frequently hear this idea, that we puny humans can't possibly affect our world. I think of all the extinct species humans are responsible for, the ravaged land and water, such as you describe, and think about how, every time I fly, I'm able to directly observe the hydrocarbon smog that shrouds my city--and most others around the world.
Then I wonder what world these commentators live in, who call environmentalists "arrogant?" What world--and viewed with what eyes?
And being encouraged in their complacency (and complicity) by such things as Michael Crichton's best seller "State of Fear." Well-intentioned, but dangerously myopic.
Carol,
I am writing a dissertation for my final in sociology on global warming, and I found your information to be quite informative and viable.
I feel sorry for those, ('concerned') that are so ignorant they refuse to believe that we are destroying our earth on a daily basis. However, we have the ingenuity and technolgy to help reverse these effects if we choose to. Unfortunately we willhave to double up to cover those who refuse to.
IT IS TRULY HARD TO BELIEVE THAT IT SEEMS A CERTAIN PARTY CAN'T SEE THE OVIOUS, GLOBAL WARNING IS NOT A RELIGIOUS THING IT IS A SCIENCE THING. THESE PEOPLE SEEM TO NEVER WANT TO BELIEVE IN SCIENCE TILL THEY NEED IT. MARK MY WORD, GLOBAL WARNING WILL BECOME CATOSTROPHIC FASTER THAN WE CAN CURRENTLY IMAGINE, SO WE HAVE A SOCIETY THAT WANTS TO RE-ACT, INSTEAD OF PRO-ACT, I BET THEY ARE ALL THE UNDERACHIEVERS ON THE PLANET.
There are people who never think of tomorrow and live only for today . They don't care about much of anything till it touches there life. Then they want to blame everyone eles. People need to look ahead and start making the changes that are needed. WE all owe this to each other cause we all have a roll in each others future. Thank God we have a few smart people who can let us know the facts
I appreciate that, Tom, thank you. We only have one planet, don't we. It would be nice to clean it up a bit for our children.
well thanks
ipsism 4 years ago
Global warming is real. Only thing is, global warming is a transient trend in the cycles of earth's history.
If one reviews the temperature history that scientists have obtained, There can be no conclusion other than that our current climate is a natural cycle, no worse than prior cycles. See, http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Global-Warming-Forest Climatologists ignore the affects of geological events, such as sub-oceanic volcanoes and astrogocial findings. Everyone takes a small sampling of data to support their pet hypothesis, rather than examining the globe in a unified approach. As such, there is rancor and duplicity to force an agenda that will make a few super-rich while making the majority poorer.