Health impacts of Waste-to-Energy technologies: A critical review of the literature

摘要

1.Worldwide, governments are committing to better waste management, such as reducing, recycling, and recovering waste. 2.Even in developed, industrialised countries like Australia, only half of all municipal solid waste is recycled (and used to be exported). 3.There is increased demand for energy and increased need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which can be achieved with renewables. 4.Waste-to-Energy (WtE) technologies are known to have economic and environmental benefits, however the health impacts are less clear. To summarise current understanding of the health impacts from WtE technologies, a critical literature review was performed by: 1) Systematically searching the following string in PubMed: air AND health AND energy AND waste AND ("energy from waste" OR "waste to energy" OR incineration) AND ("air pollution" OR "air quality" OR emission); 2) Secondarily searching using the same terms was performed in Google Scholar to identify any additional articles, and; 3) Including relevant citations within identified articles. Figure 1.