Contribution of landfill fires to air pollution – An assessment methodology

Abstract

We investigated the contribution of waste fires to air pollution. The annual emission of pollutants (CO, NOx, PM10, SO2) and greenhouse gases (CH4, CO2) were evaluated. The prediction of emissions is based on statistical data from 79 large fires that took place in Poland in 2018. We analyzed the spatial distribution of these fires along with the expected emission factor. The predicted emissions from all large waste fires was in total: 2.05 ± 0.10Gg of CH4, 19.60 ± 0.90Gg of CO, 196 ± 13Gg of CO2, 0.963 ± 0.047Gg of NOx, 5.26 ± 0.58Gg of PM10, and 0.72 ± 0.12Gg of SO2. For the evaluation of the consequences, we used the number of people exposed to PM10 emitted in one very big fire. Almost 6.5 million people were exposed to an additional 1-hour average concentration of PM10 higher than 10 μg/m3 and over 360 thousand were exposed to a concentration higher than 100 μg/m3.