Assessment of the contribution of residential waste burning to ambient PM₁₀ concentrations in Hungary and Romania

Abstract

The illegal burning of solid waste in residential stoves is an existing practice, but until now it has been completely disregarded as an emission source of atmospheric pollutants in many developed countries, including those in eastern Europe. Various types of solid waste (plastics, treated wood, plyboards, tyre, rag) serve as an auxiliary fuel in many households, in particular during the heating season. In this work, for the first time ever in atmospheric pollution studies, specific tracer compounds identified previously in controlled test burnings of different waste types in the laboratory were detected and quantified in ambient PM10 samples collected in five Hungarian and four Romanian settlements. Using the identified tracers and their experimentally determined relative emission factors, the potential contribution of illegal waste burning emissions to ambient PM10 mass concentrations was assessed. Our findings implied that the burning of polyethylene terephthalate (PET)-containing waste (food and beverage packaging, clothes) was predominant at all the locations, especially in north-eastern Hungary and Romania. There is substantial evidence that the burning of scrap furniture is also common in big cities in Hungary and Romania. Back-of-the-envelope calculations based on the relative emission factors of individual tracers suggested that the contribution of solid waste burning particulate emissions to ambient PM10 mass concentrations may be as high as a few percent. This finding, when considering the extreme health hazards associated with particulate emissions from waste burning, is a matter of serious public health concern.