Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps Public Health England has taken to assess air quality in the vicinity of waste incinerators.

Public Health England (PHE) has funded a study to further extend the evidence base as to whether emissions from modern municipal waste incinerators (MWIs) affect human health. This includes a paper estimating exposure from MWIs. It found that the amount of particulate matter people are exposed to from municipal waste incinerators emissions is very low. The results of this study are available to view at the following link:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.est.6b06478

When consulted, PHE provides an expert and independent opinion to the regulator, the Environment Agency, on the potential impacts, including from particulate matter, on human health of emissions arising from existing or proposed regulated facilities, such as MWIs.

PHE’s position is that well run and regulated modern MWIs are not a significant risk to public health. This view is based on detailed assessments of the effects of air pollutants on health and on the fact that modern MWIs make a small contribution to local concentrations of air pollutants. The full publication is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/municipal-waste-incinerator-emissions-to-air-impact-on-health