Recently, news about the impact of plastic pollution on marine life and environmental pollution has appeared frequently, which has sounded an alarm bell for people to pay urgent attention to environmental protection. Among many wastes, plastic wastes have a particularly serious impact on the environment and organisms. So what's the harm of burning plastic waste? How long is the degradation cycle of plastic waste? Let's take a look at this article.
From the perspective of resource conservation, since the main source of plastic products is the exhausted oil resources, they should be recycled as much as possible. However, at this stage, the production cost of recycling is much higher than the direct production cost, which is difficult to achieve under the current market economy conditions.
However, some places use incineration to dispose of plastic waste. Do you know the harm of incineration of plastic waste? Let's have a look.
Harm of burning plastic waste
Environmental experts pointed out that burning garbage containing plastic and rubber is very easy to produce what is known as' the most toxic poison on earth - dioxin '. If this phenomenon is not stopped and allowed to develop, it will bring great harm to the health of residents in surrounding communities, and the consequences are unimaginable.
Dioxins are harmful to human health
Dioxin is a chlorinated tricyclic aromatic hydrocarbon compound, known as the 'repeated killer' in the environment. It is a special organic compound with strong toxicity, including polychlorinated dibenzo dioxins, polychlorinated diphenylfurans and polychlorinated biphenyls. Its toxicity is 50-100 times higher than sodium cyanide and 900 times higher than arsenic.
Main hazards
Dioxins enter the human body mainly through respiratory tract, skin and digestive tract. It can cause serious skin injury diseases, has strong carcinogenic and teratogenic effects, but also has reproductive toxicity, immunotoxicity and endocrine toxicity. If the human body is exposed to high concentrations of dioxins for a short time, it may lead to skin damage, such as chloracne and skin black spots, as well as changes in liver function. If exposed for a long time, it will damage the immune system, developing nervous system, endocrine system and reproductive function.
Research shows that the cancer mortality of workers exposed to high concentrations of dioxin is 60 percentage points higher than that of the general population. The most sensitive consequences of dioxin into human body include endometrium odor, developmental effects affecting nervous system behavior (recognition), systemic developmental effects affecting reproduction (sperm quantity, female urogenital malformation) and immunotoxic effects.
When plastics are burned, they smell bad and will release a variety of harmful substances. After PVC plastics are burned, they will also produce toxic gases to poison people. Therefore, burning waste plastic products at will will will seriously endanger human health and ecological environment, which is a big problem that can not be ignored. It is hoped that the environmental protection department of the government will severely crack down on the illegal burning of waste plastic products.
Degradation cycle of plastic waste:
Plastic waste, namely 'white pollution', is difficult to degrade in nature. The general degradation cycle is 200 to 400 years. Discarded plastic waste not only seriously damages the environment, causes soil deterioration and affects crop growth, but also causes animal diseases and even death after being eaten by livestock. Plastic waste thrown into rivers and lakes will affect shipping and deteriorate water quality.