Dear Editor:
I completely disagree with John Hunter's Sept. 4 letter, Incineration Insinuation Burns Writer, promoting the incineration of Metro Vancouver's garbage.
The environmental report he referred to was flawed because it made an apples-to-oranges comparison of particulate matter released by incineration. It suggests that the particulate produced by incineration would be offset by reduced natural gas burning because of the electricity that waste incineration generates.
Even if there was an offset, which I doubt since most electricity in British Columbia is produced from hydro power, natural gas emissions are far less toxic than the particulate matter from burning garbage. When you burn every type of plastic imaginable along with organic and other material you are creating a vast and unpredictable combination of chemicals that we know will include dioxins, heavy metals and other known carcinogens. The nanoparticles that get through the incinerator filters will be small enough to get by your lungs' natural filters.
Hunter suggests that home barbecues are worse, but we don't run barbecues 24 hours a day seven days a week. Europe may use incinerators because they are short of land for landfills, but I wouldn't want their much higher cancer rates when we don't have that kind of land shortage.
The most important point for me is that if we continue to bury our garbage in Cache Creek then there is no way my grandchildren will be contaminated by our garbage, but if we build an incinerator on the North Shore then my grandchildren will be breathing the byproducts from our burned garbage every day and their health will be at risk.
Paul Hundal, West Vancouver
