Is Waste Going to be Our Apocalypse Without a Noah’s Ark to Save Us?

The waste industry: landfilling, reduce, recycle, reuse, composting, landfill mining, waste-to-energy facilities, recapturing methane gas and hazardous toxic waste landfill storage. Before moving forward, I want to discuss the difference between price and cost: price is the price we pay, upfront for a product or service. Cost is what the product costs us to maintain that product or service over its life. Therefore, the final price of a product includes the cost. A  simple  example  of  this  is  the  purchase  of  an  automobile. We may purchase   the   automobile   at   $30,000.00,   but   we   must   maintain   that automobile with monthly finance payments; this includes interest, insurance and a maintenance schedule (i.e. oil change, battery replacement, tune-ups, tire replacement, etc.). The end cost that could be double the price, if not more.  We don’t think about the full cost when we buy an item, only the price. Waste disposal is a good example. As long as we can get rid of the waste, the price doesn't matter.

Excess Waste

In the U.S. we landfill 250 million tons of trash each year. How long can we last with this amount of trash being sent to a landfill each year? Think about this: when you buy from McDonalds or any fast food restaurant, you may order any number of meals, along with a drink. If it is a quarter pounder with cheese meal, it would be packaged in a cardboard box the size of the quarter pounder, french fries in another box, depending on the size of the order, medium or large and a waxed container that would hold a drink with a plastic top and a straw with paper wrapped around for sanitary reasons, along with napkins. All of the aforementioned are not recycled, but put into the trash.

There are 33,000 McDonalds locations worldwide, McDonalds sells 75 hamburgers every second; McDonalds consumes 1 billion pound of beef each year, at the cost of five and half million head of cattle (think about the carbon footprint taken up by these cattle).

Although McDonalds has a program for buying recyclable cardboards, recycling its cooking oil and recycling corrugated cardboard behind the counter, the after counter packaging is left for the garbage. The reason that the meal packaging cannot be reused, according to McDonalds’ Web site, “is that food packaging is not widely accepted by recyclers.”

Although McDonalds saves about 35 percent of its waste by recycling corrugated cardboard and cooking oil, it is landfilling 65 percent of its after counter waste. McDonalds and other fast food restaurants must find ways to develop technologies (Noah’s Ark) to help reach 100 percent of a waste recycling program after the waste leaves the counter in order to reduce the use of landfill space. Without question they certainly have the funds and the ability to pay for its development.

Landfill Progress

As we are clearly starting to understand, landfilling is becoming a major issue and public nuisance because of landfill fires, landfill odors, underground water table contamination, methane gas leaks, illegal substance dumping and the eyesore of a high pile of garbage. Granted, landfills are starting to make progress in certain areas, such as:

• Dumping a load before it is landfilled to check for and remove recyclables and natural resources
• Landfill mining to capture recyclables and valuable natural resources that can be recycled and reused, realizing that natural resources are starting to dissipate with population growth
• Realizing the importance of putting waste-to-energy plants on the landfill to reduce waste and produce needed energy while mining the landfill
• Capturing and reusing methane gas for use in vehicles
• These landfill efforts ate technologies that continue to improve and support our environment.

Mandatory Recycling

The aforementioned indicate the progression of landfilling, but given the situation and the massive amount of garbage we create each year, recycling must become mandatory in the U.S. at all costs, as it is mandatory in the European Nations.

The price of landfilling garbage is cheap, but the cost to maintain a landfill is very high. Landfills require constant monitoring for methane gas odors and other odors, such as Hydrogen Sulfide, as well as greatly adding to the carbon footprint. A closed landfill and Superfund sites once closed and capped, have to be monitored for at least 30 years partially paid for by the owner, if the owner is not in business, then the taxpayers end up paying.

The aforementioned long-term cost should be an enormous incentive for the taxpayer to participate in and demand mandatory recycling. According to the EPA, all landfills will fail and “By Definition, All Environmental Liabilities Involve Future Costs.” There are mandatory recycling regulations in individual states, but there are no national recycling regulations; however, the European Nations have had mandatory recycling regulations since the early 1990s.

So, why does the U.S. not have mandatory recycling laws? There is certainly a sustainable way of reusing waste, a sustainable cost incentive, provide a great benefit of reducing our carbon footprint and, more importantly, a sustainable way of life. Our future strongly depends on finding better ways to reduce, recycle and reuse by the use of or invention of technologies, creating a circular economy.

If we implement those with the sufficient funding to further develop technologies quickly, it could sustain us for a long time and tremendously cut our carbon footprint. Then there would be two remaining apocalypse scenarios: ocean, lake, river and estuary dumping and hazardous/toxic waste landfilling.

Apocalypse #1

Marine debris, oil spills and ocean acidification are complicated and serious problem for our waters, and most importantly, our marine life and our life. Human beings have been dumping waste in water, including the ocean, since before the Agricultural Age. The Industrial Age brought with it new materials to dump, chemical wastes and by-products. Some materials are dumped into rivers and find their way to the ocean by running downstream. Other materials are dumped directly into the ocean from boats. Plastic is a harmful pollutant that does not break down easily in the ocean. Plastic accounts for 90 percent of all floating materials in the ocean.

The U.S. government has implemented the Ocean Dumping Ban Act of 1988 that makes it unlawful for any person to dump or transport for the purpose of dumping, sewage sludge or industrial waste into ocean waters after December 31, 1991 and provides for the payment of special fees for dumping and any penalties incurred by a dumper to be deposited into certain funds for use in finding alternatives to ocean dumping.

Ocean dumping, sewage system, road and field run-off into our waters has become a disaster and is very difficult and time consuming to clean up, but the biggest problem in the ocean is dumped plastics that take a long period of time to break down. Plastics are killing our birds and our sea life because as the plastics break down into microplastics that the birds and fish believe are food. Eating these plastics will eventually clog-up the birds and fish’s digestive system, causing death.

The Ocean contains four large garbage patches, the Western Garbage patch, the Subtropical Coverage Zone, the Eastern Garbage Patch and other Gyres with Marine Debris. With the polluted oceans and water ways being a massive cleanup project, the question I have is when we bring the waste out of these oceans and water ways what are we going to do with it, i.e. landfill it, or incinerate it? We certainly do not have enough landfill space for all the debris. This cleanup project is a herculean task that will take years and the development of multiple new technologies.

Apocalypse #2:

The second apocalypse scenario and the one we are going to concentrate on in this article is the fact that hazardous/toxic wastes are materials that are ignitable, reactive, corrosive or toxic to human health. Treatment of hazardous waste is stabilization and solidification, recycling, disposal in isolated areas of landfills, incineration and pyrolysis. The latter two require very high temperatures. The above covers the treatment and/or storage of most hazardous wastes. Please keep in mind that if the hazardous waste cannot be recycled, such as lead and acids from batteries, they are sent to a regulated landfill.  The generator or owner who is storing the waste owns it under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), revised as Superfund. CERCLA requires a treatment that permanently and significantly reduces: volume, mobility of hazardous substance and stops toxicity.

One such hazardous material is asbestos. Asbestos lawsuits permeate our courts and have created a multimillion dollar industry for the legal firms. Unfortunately, there are billions of tons of asbestos that will permeate into our environment for century’s to come. 125 million people are exposed to asbestos in the work place each year, around the world someone dies of an asbestos related disease every five minutes and more people die from asbestos illnesses each year then are killed in road accidents. Given all that is known about the deadly dangers of asbestos, the generators/owners keep landfilling it because the price is cheaper than permanently destroying it and removing any future liability.

Climate change has become obvious, causing massive forest fires, droughts, high winds, floods, mudslides, hurricanes and tornadoes. It is only a matter of time before a fluid, hurricane and/or a tornado rips through a landfill cell with toxic waste or asbestos, spreading these toxins for miles. Industry leaders must constantly and consistently seek out or invest in ways to rid our environment of these dangerous toxins.

Destroying Asbestos

There are two families of asbestos mineral: Serpentine, which is Chrysotile, and Amphibole—Amosite, Crocidolite, Actinolite, Anthophylite and Actinolite (see Figure 1). There are several destruction technologies that destroy asbestos. Two are high temperature and one is non-thermal. The high temperature processes destroys the asbestos at 2500 degrees F. They are Vitrification and Hearth Oven. They require complicated scrubber systems to limit emissions and a great amount of electrical energy to operate, requiring highly skilled labor to operate these plants. Two other issues are the waste reduction volume is not great and if the treated asbestos is not totally destroyed at the end of the throughput, it must cool down before it can be checked for complete asbestos destruction. If asbestos is found not destroyed in a batch, that batch must be run through the process again. Both of these processes are EPA approved.

The third process, which is a non-thermal process, is EPA approved, simple to operate, does not require high electrical use and is operated by accredited asbestos workers and one lab technician who can read a polarized microscope.  This process, unlike the high temperature processes is built mobile, transportable and sized to meet the client’s needs. It also reduces waste volume by 30 to 50 percent; most importantly, asbestos destruction is verified through process, therefore no asbestos leaves the process undestroyed.

All three asbestos destruction processes require shredding of asbestos containing material. Not all asbestos containing material can be put through a shredder to be treated asbestos free. The thermal processes leaves an asbestos containing   material   untreated like pipe or any other materials that cannot be put through the shredder, because they will do harm to the shredder. Whereas the non- thermal process proprietary chemical formulas was granted EPA approval to wash any asbestos containing material asbestos free that could not be shredded.

The non-thermal process is first shredded through the primary enclosed   shredder   and   then   screw conveyed in an enclosed screw conveyor into a finer secondary shredder for further size reduction up to a ¼ inch (note: both shredders are equipped with aerating water spray nozzles to keep the asbestos wet at all times). From the secondary shredder, the asbestos containing material is slowly fed by enclosed screw conveyor into the specially designed primary mixer that has been pre-charged with the proprietary conversion chemical. The primary mixer is equipped with an inverter and amperage meter to properly operate the speed of the mixer. The asbestos is kept in an aqueous solution at all times.  The primary mixer has a special blade tolerance to avoid jamming, because of the inconsistencies of the asbestos containing material.

The primary mixer is started at a slow inverter speed while the allowable amount of asbestos is fed into the primary mixer. Once the asbestos containing material is 95 to 98 percent destroyed in the primary mixer, it is pumped into the secondary mixer. When the asbestos containing material is verified to be completely destroyed, it is pumped into a settling tank to allow the solids to settle out and the proprietary chemicals to be siphoned off and reused. The remaining solids are pumped into a specially built cement mixer for neutralization and recycling.

Because no asbestos containing material leaves the non-thermal process before it is verified non-asbestos, the non-thermal process is time saving, electrical cost saving, environmentally friendly and the verification that no asbestos has left the process before destroyed. It meets the EPA required final testing for conformation of asbestos destruction by Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) as required by 40 CFR 61.155—Standard for Operations that Convert Asbestos-Containing Waste Material into Non—Asbestos (Asbestos—Free) Material.

Making the Effort

As human beings, every day we are becoming more and more aware of the damage we have done and are doing to our environment by not recycling and by not practicing conservation.  I will leave you with this thought from a Wall Street Journal Salt and Pepper cartoon from 16 years ago: The scene is of a father sitting on a couch and his son standing in front of him. The father is looking at the son’s report card with great despair and disappointment, obviously expressing his opinion about the report card to the son. The son could not have given a better answer to his father for not receiving better grades. His answer: “If your generation doesn't learn to save the planet, it won’t matter if my generation can’t read or write.

Sixteen years later has become truer and truer. It is up to all who have the power to develop technologies and/ or implement waste solving technologies to make the effort no matter what the price, because we cannot afford the cost.

Eliminating the Threat

While asbestos dangers are well documented, history has long avoided eliminating the threat it poses to human health.

We are starting to progress in our waste habits by recycling different streams of waste and using closed landfills constructively. Composting food waste and recycling plastics, glass, metals, cardboard and newspapers is our way of life. We are realizing the importance of installing waste-to-energy(WTE) plans on closed and active landfills to capture energy.

Separating recyclables from municipal waste before it is dumped in landfills, as well as landfill mining for recyclables are now prominent trends.

We create 250 million tons of waste per year. By practicing reduce, reuse and recycle, we are taking the right steps to minimize waste to landfills.

Sustainability Liability

Many companies are touting zero-waste-to-landfill from their manufacturing operations, however, when the actual facility is taken into account, that may be a false claim.

Companies are hiring or internally promoting sustainability officers who are responsible for complying with all environmental regulations, such as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). CERCLA requires treatments that permanently and significantly reduce volume, mobility of hazardous substances and most importantly, toxicity.

While companies like General Motors, Ford and Chrysler tout sustainability achievements, over the past five years these companies have closed or sold approximately 180 manufacturing facilities. Most of these facilities were built before 1979 and all had to have asbestos-containing material installed in them when they were built.

Asbestos permeates most facilities built before 1979: utilities, military bases, government buildings, refineries, factories, homes and landfills: collectively known as our “built environment.”

Asbestos has been documented in archaeological diggings found in pottery and chinking of homes in Scandinavia from 300 B.C.

History Lessons

The use of asbestos has a long history. Asbestos has been used for more than 2,000 years, called by the ancient Greeks “inextinguishable,” because of superior resistance to fire.

The Greek, Strabo, as well as the Roman, Pliny the Elder, noticed the sickness of the lungs and the early deaths of slaves who worked in the asbestos mines, and also in slaves who wove asbestos table clothes, napkins, burial garments and asbestos into wicks for the Eternal Flame of the Vestal Virgins.

Little known to Strabo and Pliny the Elder, their observations of slaves contracting lung illness would become a fatal, proven fact almost 2,000 years later.

Strabo and Pliny never could have realized or predicted the lung disease caused by asbestos would become the world’s greatest industrial disaster ever known to man and the largest class action law suits ever to swamp the court system. As right as their observations were on the fact that asbestos caused “sickness of the lungs in those who worked with it,” they also could not have predicted that more than 3,000 people in the United States are diagnosed with Mesothelioma each year, 125 million people worldwide encounter asbestos in the home or workplace; every five minutes someone in the world dies from asbestos-related illnesses.

This number amounts to 100,000 people per year and is expected to increase to 5 to 10 million people by 2030. It is a fact that every year there are more people killed by asbestos than in road accidents. Although used through the centuries, the use of asbestos flourished at the onset of the industrial revolution in the 18^th century when factories boomed and asbestos was seen as miracle mineral due to its fire resistant, chemical resistant and tinsel strength. Industry created many different products that included asbestos.

In the railroad industry it was used to line refrigeration units, boxcars, and cabosses, and the material was found to be especially useful as insulation for pipes, boilers and fireboxes in stream locomotives and as refractory brick in the coal-fired engines and furnaces. The automobile industry used asbestos in brake linings and clutches, as well as in wiring necessary for lighting and ignitions.

The construction industry found many uses of asbestos for factory and home building products: roofing material (both felt and cement board with asbestos embedded in it), pipe and boiler covering, floor tile, taping, acoustical ceiling tiles, Transite furnace flu, and most dangerously as vermiculite in attic insulation and plant soil additive. Vermiculite was manufactured in Libby, Mont., by W.R. Grace who also manufactured asbestos-containing spray-on fireproofing known as Monokote. Monokote was widely used in thousands of buildings throughout the world. One well known site being the World Trade Center, which still had asbestos containing material when it was attacked.

Referred to as “Transite in the United States,” the material permeates Australia and many other warm climate countries.

The construction industry, by far, gave asbestos-containing material products a great deal of uses, as did the shipbuilding industry. Because of the widespread commercial uses of asbestos, the cases of asbestos and mesothelioma started to come to light.

In 1899, British physician, Dr. H. Montague Murray, discovered the first case of asbestos and recorded an abstract named “Curious Bodies.” In 1906, French factory inspector, Auribolt, discovered the first asbestos lung disease, mesothelioma in 50 people. The use of asbestos and its dangers became so common that by 1918 life insurance companies started to charge higher premiums for asbestos workers.

Too Little, Too Late

Unfortunately 1918 was too late, because as the years went on and asbestos diseases became more prevalent and obvious, many financially solid white glove insurance companies were forced into bankruptcy by asbestos lawsuits, as were myriad of companies who manufactured asbestos-containing material.

By 1930 it was well known to manufactures that asbestos-containing products were a cause of lung disease with death to follow, but many chose to not expose the truth.

The U.S. Public Health Service recognized the effects asbestos has on human health and recommended guidelines for asbestos exposure as early as 1938, but with the onset of World War II, the Public Health Service recommendations were ignored.

The expansion of existing military bases, the building of new military bases, amplified shipbuilding, and new government buildings, such as the Pentagon, all used asbestos.

The Defense Logistics Agency during World War II bought and stored in silos around the country raw asbestos in case asbestos did not become available.

With so much asbestos in our built environment around the world and the never-ending and ongoing illnesses caused by asbestos, coupled with the landfill shortage, why are we not destroying the asbestos to prevent the harm to humans?

Methods of Destruction

There are U.S.-Environmental-Protection-Agency-approved technologies that destroy asbestos by high temperature: plasma torch, vitrification and hearth oven, and a non-thermal process, ABCOV®, which works by a chemical-physical reaction.

With the ABCOV® process, asbestos destruction is followed through the process until the asbestos is destroyed. In high-temperature processes, asbestos has to run through the process, be cooled down and be tested for asbestos. If asbestos is found in the batch that was run through the high temperature units, it must be put back through the unit until destroyed.

Asbestos is and will be a killer as long as it remains in our built environment. A Wall Street Journal “Pepper … and Salt” cartoon that has sat on my desk for at least 17 years says it best: A father sitting on the couch looking at his son’s report card with great disappointment and letting his son know how he felt. The son replied: “If your generation doesn’t learn to save the planet, it won’t matter if my generation can’t read or write.” 

Tony Nocito, Managing Member of the ABCOV® Companies, LLC, has developed, commercialized and markets the ABCOV asbestos destruction process. He has 25 years asbestos abatement experience and 26 years construction/demolition industry experience. Visit ABCOV® Blog. Guest Blogger Featured in Construction & Demolition Recycling. 

Warren Buffett Trades Mesothelioma Death for Money

It is not for the victims of asbestos diseases, but for the lawyer's self-interest that asbestos litigation occurs, and the self-interest of Mr. Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway's group of Insurance companies that are responsible for asbestos liabilities.

The asbestos litigation industry is a multibillion dollar industry that spends more on advertising than Coca-Cola. Asbestos litigation provides substantial- steady income to asbestos litigation firms and their litigators as long as payments are made to the victims.

We know Mr. Buffett as the Oracle of Omaha, a highly praised investor and a seemingly a nice guy who plays a Ukulele and sings at the conventions of the companies he owns.

Mr. Buffett has proven to make the right investments at the right time, because he sees the future and has the cash to buy it. With cash and enough time, time being the key word, you can make yourself one of the wealthiest men in the world, as Mr. Buffet.

Mr. Buffett's, Berkshire Hathaway, has recently purchased a litany of insurance companies that are directly responsible for asbestos and/or hazardous/toxic liabilities, which Mr. Buffett agreed to take on with this purchase.

So why would the world's wisest investor buy such portentous liability?

The answer: along with that liability comes tons of billions in cash, known as the float, which is invested at great returns, as long as Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway insurance companies can deny, delay or not pay plaintiffs' (victims) claims. The float is money held by the insurance companies to pay the victims of asbestos and/or hazardous/toxic diseases.

Asbestos and /or hazardous/toxic diseases are a death sentence. In litigation, the defending law firms are always looking for angels to hold off payments, pay as little as possible or nothing at all to the plaintiffs, which buys time.

It is estimated by A.M. Best, an insurance company rating firm, that asbestos claim losses will surge to $121 billion dollars with no end in sight.

A.M. Best also estimates insurers are incurring $2 billion in asbestos claims each year, as well as paying out $2.5 billion to victims each year.

According to Ajit Jain Berkshire Hathaway's insurance companies paid out $1.4billion dollars in asbestos and /or hazardous/toxic claims last year. Do the math: that leaves Berkshire, according to A.M. Best, $1.1 billion to invest while fending off the losses of $2 billion a year being held in the float and invested while the cases are being detained or slowly litigated.

Also, Berkshire Hathaway's insurance company corporate-maneuvers left litigators puzzled, not knowing who to sue, payments are not being made to the plaintiffs while Berkshire's defense litigator's buy time to allow the float money to make required target profits, instead of paying the victims.

According to the Fox Business News, "Berkshire said its insurance and other revenue jumped 14% to $35.92 billion.

Mr. Buffett quote: "We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and greedy only when others are fearful".

If you are dying from asbestos or hazardous/toxic diseases, you will certainly be fearful of dying, but more so for the future of your loved ones.

Fear and/or desire are the greatest motivators. If you fear you will die broke from asbestos or a hazardous/toxic disease, leaving your family with nothing, you will quickly have the desire, for peace of mind before dying, to settle for a lesser amount that may be paid sometime in the future to your loved ones.

But if the Berkshire Hathaway insurance companies outright refuse to pay, because Berkshire Hathaway has to make its targeted bottom-line profits ----- what are your choices? - suffer more and die broke!

In life our true character shows through at one point or another. If we are lucky to live long enough, we will have enough time to adjust flaws in our character for the better.

Mr. Buffet is running out of time, but the aforementioned proves his strong ties to the belief of Gordon Gekko: Greed is good. 

I would make a suggestion that Mr. Buffett please put a good portion of the money he makes from the float in scientific and medical research that cure diseases caused by asbestos and other hazardous/toxic substances and invest in environmental technologies that permanently remove asbestos and other hazardous/toxic substances from our environment in order to save lives.

Instead of the beliefs of Gordon Gekko, I recommend Mr. Buffet follow the beliefs of Oscar Schindler, "To save one life is to save the world". 

Honest Truths

I have to be honest about my life, a life of sever Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). My father had it. I know, because I asked him why he only went to one month of high school, he said, I couldn’t study or sit still to read.

ADHD is hereditary; some of my children have it.

At age 30, not knowing what ADHD was or that I had it, I made up my mind that I was going to learn how to read and write. So every night I went home and forced myself to read. I had a college PhD English Professor who lived across the hall from me, Elaine Levy. Elaine agreed for $50.00 an hour to give me private English lessons, chapter by chapter.

I worked for many years to improve my English, vocabulary and writing.

I am more than appreciative when an environmental magazine publishes one of my articles and more than grateful to Craines Waste and Recycling News editors and Maria Kirch who allow me to be published monthly.

From one of my writings, I received an email from Garry Van Heest, Vice President -Remediation at Directional Technologies, Inc:

Tony,

My Dad was a self-employed carpenter from 1950 to 1970.  He was exposed to dust from asbestos-containing building products (as was I as a kid when I worked with him).

I agree: this material has to be removed from our environment.  There are documented cases of people getting meso from one exposure and you do not get the disease unless you are exposed - no documented cases of anyone with the disease that was not exposed.

As you can see from my LinkedIn profile, I am an environmental professional with industrial hygiene experience.  It really blindsided me when my Dad was diagnosed.  I thought it was only people who worked in the asbestos industry that contracted the disease.

I am joining your mailing list.

Keep up the good work.

Garry

I was humbled by the fact that my writing has been able to cause environmental awareness and I was flattered and thankful for Garry’s email. I asked if I could use his email. 

Garry’s answer: “You have my authorization to use my story - anything to help even one more person from contracting mesothelioma”.  Garry

There are many executives of companies, who have allowed pollution for profit; upon their death their children will inherit their money, as I inherited ADHD. The pollution created by that money is also hereditary to their children as well as many others will involuntarily pay, either by environmental clean-up costs or by contracting a detrimental and fatal illness, much like Garry’s father. It is inevitable!

Science has found a way to deal with ADHD using medication and therapy.

Science must find a way to deal with the many environmental pollutants by creating technologies to take them out of our environment once and for all or we will continue to pay until we are broke or terminally ill. This is the Honest Truth!

The Impact of Environmental Litigation

Let's explore the history of toxic substances in our environment from the time we knew that the toxic substances were harmful and lethal to our health.

Let us start with asbestos -- the most litigated of the hazardous, toxic materials.

The Greeks, the earliest users of asbestos 3,000 years ago, considered the value of asbestos almost equal to the value of gold. Chrysotile, the most commonly used asbestos, comes from the Greek word of gold, chysos, and fiber, tilos.

The Greeks and the Romans recorded that slaves who worked with asbestos and in asbestos mines died early from lung sickness.

The industrial revolution brought on the expanded use of asbestos, because of its superior fire retardant ability and its tensile strength. Asbestos products were used to contain friction and heated parts of machinery, protecting that part of the machinery from wear and tear and protecting the worker from burns. The use of asbestos in these applications made sense from a manufacturing point of view, but not from a health point of view.

The vast increase of mining and processing asbestos during the industrial revolution was proven in the late 1800s to damage the lungs, causing death.

The use of asbestos in manufacturing continued for more than 100 years without regulation pertaining to the safety of the worker. Asbestos is still used today, in spite of the health effects.

Chromium has been used for over 2,000 years. Although asbestos relates to lung cancer, hexavalent chromium or chromium VI, is related to a mired amount of diseases, lung cancer only being one of them. As early as 1930, the effects of respiratory cancer in workers in the chrome industry were diagnosed. Eventually, a mired amount of other chromium related diseases that ranged from asthma, liver disease and skin cancer to cardiovascular disease, as well as many other lethal effects to the human organs were discovered from exposure to chromium.

Chromium cancer clusters can be isolated and identified to specific areas of our environment, such as former chromium manufacturing sites and dumping sites from those chromium manufacturing sites.

Lead has been used for over 6,000 years and the effects of lead poisoning have been known for over 2,500 years. All through history the effects of non-occupational lead poisoning have been documented.

In recent years publications on the devastating effects of lead paint has permanently impaired the learning ability of children.

The industries that used the aforementioned hazardous, toxins in their manufacturing operations have caused devastating effects on society and loved ones.

The business of environmental litigation has cut deeply into industries profits, causing many to go bankrupt.

Although litigation does not cure or bring back a loved one, it says loudly and clearly that companies must take advanced steps to protect the environment and loved ones, because there is no dollar amount that can buy a human life.

The Trouble with Asbestos Disposal

Hailed as a miracle mineral because of its superior fire resistance and tensile strength, asbestos was installed abundantly into our built environment for over 200 years. However, once it was established that this undeniably useful resource was a dangerous carcinogen, Australia and many other countries enacted strict regulations for handling asbestos and asbestos containing material (ACM). There regulations created an asbestos abatement industry worth billions of dollars worldwide annually, and which will continue to generate millions of ton of asbestos waste long into the future.

Corporations and insurance companies have paid out billions of dollars in asbestos claims and have increased their reserves by billions of dollars to cover present and future incalculable loses pertaining to asbestos lawsuits. Much of the cement board that permeates Australian residential, commercial, school, and government buildings is a prominent example of such a product.

The installation and presence of these building products has caused many construction trade workers – including plumbers, pipefitters, boilermakers, carpenters and installers – to contract mesothelioma and other asbestos related diseases. Besides the construction trades, the people who live and work in buildings containing asbestos are potentially exposed to toxic forms of asbestos. Consequently, the ACM mining, manufacturing and installation industries have created great liability issues for the producers, installers, end users and their associated insurance companies.

From 1950 to 1970, Australia was the highest per capita user of asbestos in the world, and vast numbers of domestic dwellings built before 1982 contained – or still contain – asbestos.

Whereas most countries banned the use of asbestos in building products by 1980, Australia’s relatively late bans are likely to lead to more asbestos related exposures and diseases many years into the future. Australia already has one of the world’s highest rates of mesothelioma deaths, as well as many other asbestos related cancers. There late bans will feed the asbestos abatement industry and the disposal of asbestos and ACMs, as well as contribute strongly to ongoing contraction of asbestos diseases.

In Tasmania, the Australian Workers Union has developed a plan to remove all the ACM by 2030, 17 years from now. But this raises difficult questions. Will all ACM on substrates be removed? Where will the ACM be stored (nothing that asbestos never really goes away, even when landfilled).

US laws make the owner or generator asbestos or ACM a “Potential Responsible Part”, who is responsible for the cradle-to-grave liability for asbestos stored in a landfill through perpetuity. This means that when the landfill fails and must be cleaned up, the Potential Responsible Party or Parties, become responsible to pay for clean-up. In Australia there is no such regulation, with taxpayers meeting much of the financial burden for clean-up.

Let us explore the disposal options presently available for asbestos and ACMs.

Landfilling

Eventually, all landfills will fail. Modern day landfills liners last around 30 years. What happens when the liners are punctured or deteriorate?

Although landfilling is the cheapest and most convenient disposal option for asbestos or ACM, it is not the most cost effective – in the long run someone will have to pay to re-abate the asbestos from the landfill before it pollutes the surrounding area.

So what happens to asbestos or ACM when it is landfilled? By regulation, asbestos and ACM must be wrapped in plastic or a double polythene bag. Every package of asbestos must be clearly marked with a proper shipping name, including UN number, packaging group number, hazchem code and class label. The polythene bags are loaded on to a bin or trailer and driven to the landfill. The vehicle carting the ACM to the landfill must display a placard that is placed at the front and rear of the vehicle stating “Miscellaneous Dangerous Goods”. Next, the polythene bags are dumped from the height of a trailer or container into the landfill. The dumped asbestos polythene bags must then be covered with 15 to 30 cm of non-asbestos covering pushed over by heavy construction equipment.

What are the possible consequences of this method of disposal? Bags can break, allowing asbestos fibers to become airborne and migrate to the water table. An example of problems encountered in Australia with landfilling asbestos is Wyong Council’s landfill at Shelly Beach, New South Wales. Because ACMs have surfaced above its cover due to erosion and weather conditions, it will cost $12 million to clean up the asbestos dumped into the landfill during the 1970s. Also, there is no way to tell how many people who live and work around Shelly Beach have been exposed to the surfaced asbestos.

Thermal Options

There are presently three thermal options to destroy and permanently rid asbestos from our environment: vitrification, plasma torch, and Asbestos Recycling, Inc.’s hearth oven.

All thermal processes require high heat and high energy to destroy asbestos, because they need to run at 1500 to 2000 °C to glassify the asbestos. The asbestos is fed into the thermal unit for a required residence time. Following this, the end product must be cooled before testing. If no asbestos is detected by transmission electron microscopy, the end product can be recycled or sent to a non-regulated landfill. If asbestos is detected, then the whole previously treated batch must be put back through the thermal unit.

The high temperatures require substantial electricity at high cost, along with high maintenance costs on the refractory – the inner brick lining of furnace, which over time cracks and wears out due to the high temperature required to destroy the asbestos – which causes approximately 25 to 30% down time. Furthermore, the thermal unit must have an extensive and efficient scrubber system that prevents the escape of potentially harmful byproducts (e.g. furans, dioxins and nitrogen oxides).

Chemical Options

There are several chemical options for the permanent disposal for asbestos.

Soaking chrysotile asbestos in sulfuric acid for an extended period of time destroys the chrysotile, but is slow in its destruction reaction time. Once the reaction is complete, the acid is neutralized with a base, such as lime or baking soda.

W.R. Grace, Inc. developed an in situ non-thermal chemical process to destroy asbestos containing spray-on fireproofing containing chrysotile. The spray-on fireproofing (trade name Monokote) was developed and sold by Grace when asbestos was still permitted in building materials. When asbestos was banned, Grace developed an in situ chemical asbestos destruction process that destroyed only chrysotile. The process requires full negative air containment with four air changes per hour, but not high electrical use. Ultimately, Grace encountered two problems: 1) for a building with hundreds or thousands of square feet of sprayed-on fireproofing, it was difficult and costly to prove that all the asbestos was destroyed; 2) the process did not fall under the relevant US Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulation; therefore Grace could not secure EPA approval for the process. (The aforementioned thermal options are EPA approved, because they do fall under the relevant regulation).

The ABCOV®  Method of asbestos destruction is a non-thermal; EPA approved mixing process that chemically and physically destroys all forms of asbestos in all ACM. The process is performed under negative air containment and employs size reduction of the ACM and high speed dispersion mixing with ABCOV®  chemicals, which are contained in a mild acidic solution.

The asbestos destruction is able to best tested, using polarized light microscopy, as the asbestos is being destroyed, allowing no asbestos to leave the process equipment until completely inert.

The process requires the negative air containment to have six air changes per hour. There is minimal electrical usage and a negative air scrubber system that includes an activated carbon filter and a high-efficiency particulate air filter that will provide six air changes per hour (as opposed to the four air changes per hour that is required for a typical asbestos abatement project performed under negative air containment.

Innovative waste treatment technologies are the future of the waste industry – not only for asbestos, but for all hazardous wastes that cannot be recycled.

Australian bans on asbestos:

1967 - crocidolite (blue asbestos) - considered the most dangerous of the asbestos minerals.

1989 - amosite (brown asbestos) - banned from building products (and from other products in 2003).

2003 - chrysotile (white asbestos).

2004 - the remaining asbestos minerals, tremolite, actinolite and anthophyllite.

Sources: Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization; Australian Council of Trade Unions

Further reading

• www.asbestos.com
• Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (www.asbestosdiseaseawareness.org)
• United States Federal Environmental Protection Agency (www.epa.gov)
• Australian Industrial Waste Resource Guidelines: Asbestos Transport and Disposal (http://bit.ly/12EwRvY)

References

1. NSW Government: Cabinet Office 2004. Report of the special commission of inquiry into the medical research and compensation foundation. ‘Asbestos and James Hardie’, Annexure J., p.117.
2. National Occupational Health & Safety Commission 2005. Code of Practice for the Safe Removal of Asbestos 2nd Edition [NOHSC:2002 (2005)].

Disclaimer: Tony Nocito works for ABCOV®; Description of proprietary technologies does not imply endorsement by Remediation Australasia.

We would like to thank Australian Remediation Industry Cluster for giving us this great opportunity to publish our content in their quarterly magazine "Remediation Australasia."  Remediation Australasia, Issue 13.

Understanding price and cost of hazardous wastes

The first line of defense for companies is they don't have any hazardous, toxic or regulated wastes. And if they do, it is minimal, gets cleaned up and sent to a safe landfill (if there is such a thing). So they believe they are safe.

You may be safe, but our environment is not and our children for sure are not and your future stockholders definitely are not.

I have knowledge of asbestos problems, because that is my business. I am gaining knowledge of Hexavalent Chromium problems, a new business for me. I am also somewhat knowledgeable about other toxic and hazardous wastes, but these wastes are not as well publicized as asbestos due to mesothelioma litigator's barrage of constant advertisements.

The Wall Street Journal took a look at asbestos trust's fraudulent claims on March 11. Fact: Where there's money, there will always be fraud. Who knows better than the Wall Street Journal, they cover Wall Street.
With the trusts paying out $100 million a year, "There is growing concerns that the trusts will run out of money before America runs out of asbestos victims," the article reports. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.

One litigator claims that asbestos "victims are the worst corporate mass genocide in history," a very true statement.

Hazardous, toxic and regulated wastes must be dealt with now! They must be taken out of our environment -- permanently -- or the genocide will continue!

It doesn't make sense that companies wouldn't be interested in using available positive environmental technologies to permanently rid these dangerous wastes. I think corporations think the price of landfilling is cheaper than treatment. Please keep in mind that price and cost are two totally different numbers.

What happens when asbestos is landfilled: the driver who takes asbestos to the landfill must suit-up in asbestos protective clothing with respirator before the load can be dumped. When dumped, inevitably containers are going to break, allowing asbestos to become airborne. This holds true for other hazards. I sure hope you don't live around one of these landfills.

Where the cells asbestos and other hazardous and toxic wastes are stored (I used the word stored, because the waste eternally belongs to the generator) cannot be used for any other purpose. They can't be used for waste-to-energy, recyclables recovery, installation of wind farms or solar panels or to capture methane gases. The cells cannot be disturbed forever except by the inevitable wear and tear, causing exposure to hazards long into the future.

The fact is the generator's name is listed on the landfill manifest, container the waste is stored in and, in some cases, on the waste material itself.

Why do the generators keep landfilling hazards when asbestos has proven that the cost will be much greater than the price?

Zero waste, circular economy, sustainability impact the bottom line

What is zero waste? In manufacturing zero waste's goal is to reuse left over materials from the manufacturing of products, putting them back into the process to manufacture new products. Zero waste can also be carried out when a manufacturer of a product that is recyclable takes it back to its facility to reuse recycled product in the production of a new similar product. This closely resembles circular economy, but not completely, because all older products cannot be brought back for feed for reproduction, due to possible hazardous and toxic contaminants, asbestos being one.

The construction industry is continuously toiling to bring construction and demolition debris to zero waste to reduce, reuse, recycle, and salvage, but the construction industry is only accomplishing a 95% recycling rate. Again, hazardous and toxic wastes, like asbestos, are one of the problems standing in the way of 100% recycling.

Although recycling and zero waste are becoming a way of life, to get to zero waste takes hard work and constant diligent-awareness of how to avoid creating waste.

Recycling will continue to eliminate waste to the landfill, especially in the construction debris area. This was proven to me when I met the chief environmental engineer for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), Thomas Abdallah, who is faced with a herculean challenge of dealing daily with a subway system that is more than 100 years old. How Abdallah sleeps at night, I haven't been able to figure out. As I got to know Abdallah, I found him to be a "in the present thinker" but always looking to the future of how to improve the system and how to eliminate wastes, like asbestos, that are a constant pain. Abdallah recently told me that in the last renovation project he recycled 95% of the construction debris.

But the MTA doesn't manufacture; it provides transportation. So when improvements are made to the 100-year-old system, recycling becomes of great importance.

Our future is to think in terms of how nature works, i.e. re-fertilize to create a new crop, thus a circular economy.

A circular economy is going to take persistence and time to create, but it will be our environmental savior once created.

I recently met with the Armstrong flooring and tile company's Andy Lake, recycling infrastructure processing specialist, in charge of bringing used ceiling tile back into the manufacturing system. Lake arranged the meeting with his ceiling group and Armstrong's floor tile group headed by Lisa Y. Cavataio.

My observation of these two groups was that they are diligently working to develop Armstrong into a circular economy company by bringing back ceiling and floor tile to its birth for fertilizer for a new crop of building materials.

Lake and Cavataio, like Abdullah, are present and future thinkers.

The examples above are people who are environmentally conscious and are aware of the importance of sustainability, understanding what it means to the future of our environment and to the company's bottom line.