Title: For Air Pollution, Trash Is a Burning Problem | Climate Central
Headings: For Air Pollution, Trash Is a Burning Problem
For Air Pollution, Trash Is a Burning Problem
‘First Best Guess’
What’s in the Emissions
Just a Starting Point

Content: Click image to enlarge. Credit: Christine Wiedinmyer
Wiedinmyer also wants to put her estimates into models of climate and air movement and see if they match up with current air observations. She wants to figure out which populations the pollution might be affecting, and where it is interacting with other pollution sources. Overall, it’s an issue “that I think should get more attention,” Wiedinmyer said. Eri Saikawa, who studies air pollution and its health impacts at Emory University, and wasn’t involved in the new study, plans to use Wiedinmyer’s data in a model to see how it matches observations in China and Southeast Asia, and to see how trash burning might be contributing to the substantial amounts of air pollution there. “What they’re interested in is where they can reduce emissions,” Saikawa said of policymakers she has met with in China. Currently the focus has been on power plants and cars — trash burning hasn’t been part of the conversation. Reducing emissions from trash burning isn’t an easy prospect in many areas, though. In Nepal, where Yokelson plans to do further work this year and next, the government is well aware of the problem, but it can’t afford the kind of highly efficient incinerators that would get rid of much of the emissions from trash.