Doctor Talks Incineration

Doc­tor Talks Incineration

- by Mitchell Kirk, Sep­tem­ber 25, 2013. Source: Pharos-Tribune

More than 50 peo­ple came out for a pre­sen­ta­tion Tues­day at Logans­port Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal about how incin­er­a­tion plants can affect health.

The event was orga­nized by Cit­i­zens’ Alliance for Respon­si­ble Ener­gy, or CARE, a group of cit­i­zens who oppose the pro­posed pow­er plant project in Logansport.

The pro­posed plant is cur­rent­ly under nego­ti­a­tion between the city and Pyrolyz­er LLC, out of Boca-Raton, Fla. The plant would use a process called pyrol­y­sis to heat refuse-derived fuel and com­bust the gas pro­duced from it to pow­er tur­bines and cre­ate electricity.

Dr. Nor­ma Kreilein, a pedi­a­tri­cian with Daviess Com­mu­ni­ty Hos­pi­tal in Wash­ing­ton, Ind., spoke on how incin­er­a­tion plants can affect health. She has been involved with the oppo­si­tion move­ment of a project aim­ing to con­vert a coal-fired gen­er­at­ing plant in Jasper to one fueled by bio­mass and has briefed the U.S. Con­gress on the health haz­ards of bio­mass incineration.

“This isn’t just a pow­er plant, it’s some­thing hap­pen­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty and some­thing that will affect the health in the com­mu­ni­ty,” Kreilein said at the hos­pi­tal Tuesday.

Kreilein addressed the health effects of emis­sions of incin­er­a­tion plants, includ­ing how emit­ted chem­i­cals can destroy cil­ia, the slen­der exten­sions of cells in wind­pipes that move the mucus lay­er atop it to dis­charge unwant­ed chem­i­cals out of the lungs as a defense mechanism.

She said the chem­i­cals present in emis­sions can cause cil­ia to fuse togeth­er and not func­tion prop­er­ly, allow­ing tox­ins to be absorbed into the blood­stream and cre­ate chron­ic dis­eases, adding that med­i­cine is not effec­tive in cur­ing chron­ic diseases.

She went on to say there are dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals in emis­sions small enough to go through a person’s nasal pas­sage and into their brain.

Kreilein also addressed the byprod­uct of var­i­ous indus­tri­al process­es known as diox­in, a top­ic of much debate regard­ing the Logans­port project. Kreilein said the high­ly tox­ic com­pounds mim­ic hor­mones to con­fuse the body and remain in men for­ev­er while leav­ing women only through breast milk.

Sup­port­ers of the project have said any emis­sion of haz­ardous chem­i­cals would be minute. Kreilein ques­tioned how they could know if the project has nev­er been car­ried out on the pro­posed scale.

Mer­cedes Brugh, a mem­ber of CARE, pro­posed an ordi­nance to Cass Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­ers last month that would estab­lish lim­its on new large incin­er­a­tion plants in the coun­ty. The com­mis­sion­ers have yet to decide whether it will be con­sid­ered for a vote.

“Cass Coun­ty needs a clean air ordi­nance,” Kreilein said.

Pro­po­nents of the project have said the plant will have to under­go a per­mit­ting process through the Indi­ana Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment, or IDEM, have con­tin­u­ous mon­i­tor­ing and go through peri­od­ic testing.

Kreilein said rules that go fur­ther than IDEM’s are nec­es­sary. Illus­trat­ing her point, she referred to a slide depict­ing a map from IDEM’s web­site show­ing its par­tic­u­late mat­ter and oth­er mon­i­tor­ing sites across Indi­ana, which are few and far between, espe­cial­ly in the north­ern part of the state.

A pre­vi­ous arti­cle about this event incor­rect­ly stat­ed Logans­port Memo­r­i­al Hos­pi­tal physi­cians Kevin O’Brien, Craig Pawlows­ki and Bev­er­ly Ahoni would be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the discussion.

Dur­ing the pub­lic com­ments por­tion of the event, Logans­port City Coun­cil­man Bob Bish­op, who sup­ports the Pyrolyz­er project, ques­tioned if Kreilein would oppose the plant if it had less emis­sions than coal-fired plants.

“If we cut emis­sions by 90 per­cent, do you think it’s a good thing?” he asked.

Kreilein said it would be if it were proven to be true. She admit­ted that she didn’t know her­self whether or not it was true, but that the tac­tics used dur­ing the begin­ning stages of the project are sim­i­lar to those that were used in Jasper, which exposed holes she said she dis­cov­ered in her research were com­mon across the ener­gy industry.

Mitchell Kirk is a staff reporter at the Pharos-Tri­bune. He can be reached at 574–732-5130 or mitchell.kirk@pharostribune.com.