http://www.nontoxicburning.org/facts.html

FACT SHEET

• Natural rubber and synthetic rubber containing styrene and butadiene
• Up to 17 different heavy metals including lead, zinc arsenic and chromium
• Benzene-based extender oils and other petrochemicals
• Carbon black
• Chlorine

• The hazardous constituents are released into air and create new, frequently more toxic compounds.
• Chlorinated materials produce dioxin. Dioxins are some of the most toxic chemicals known; damaging health effects include cancer, birth defects, and impaired child development.
• Incomplete combustion of benzene leads to the creation of highly toxic dioxins, furans, PCB’s (polychlorinated biphenals), and PAH’s (polyaromatic hydrocarbons) – all known to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity.
• Metals are not destroyed at any temperature. 100% are emitted from the stack or concentrated in the cement product or in the waste material of the process. Lead is poisonous to the nervous system, known to cause learning disabilities; zinc can cause birth defects; chromium and arsenic can cause cancer.

• Cement kilns are designed to make cement , not to be waste incinerators.
• Cement kilns are not equipped with secondary combustion chambers to assure complete destruction of wastes.
• Cement kilns do not have to meet the same stringent standards of performance and the emission limits required of commercial incineration facilities.
• Combustion recovers only a portion of the energy contained in a tire. True recycling is much more efficient.
• When plants import scrap tires, local communities and agricultural lands receive the resulting pollution.

What alternatives to burning tires are there?

• Contaminated agricultural products, fish and game, could threaten an area’s economic vitality.
• Real estate values and tourism could be depressed.
• Related health care costs are absorbed by the community, not the cement company.

• Toxic chemicals released by burning tires become part of the food chain, entering water, soil, plants, livestock, dairy products, and wild life.
• Studies are finding that indirect exposure to toxins through the food chain presents serious health risks to humans, even more serious than inhaling pollutants.

What’s the point?

• Burning tires in cement kilns is neither "recycling" nor a sound disposal solution.
• Dispersed toxic by-products will enter the food chain and our bodies.
• The poor operating record of many cement companies cast doubt on their ability to burn wastes safely within set emission limits.

• Tires contain high level toxic heavy metals. Holnam’s own data show tires contain 407% more chromium, 392% more lead, and 1448% more arsenic than coal. Metals do not burn, so they are released into the air as ash.
• Tires are composed of styrene and 1,3-butadiene, both suspected of causing cancer; extender oils which contain carcinogenic benzene derivatives; and carbon black, a fine particulate matter produced by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels.
• Unlike incinerators which are designed specifically for the task, cement kilns cannot use afterburners. This important technology has been included on every incinerator built in the last 45 years, and is vital during "upsets," which cement kilns regularly experience.
• Emissions of some compounds in tire burning cement kilns are "through the roof."
• Monitoring and enforcement by the State (of Texas) is lax. Colorado permitted tire burning in Florence CO with less testing in some respects than you would need for your car. Only four pollutants were tested out of many dozens expected to be emitted. Instead, the State accepted a test from a very different facility in Seattle, Washington.

• Shredded tires are being used as lightweight fill which has improved permeability and greater insulating properties than traditional fill materials. Tire shreds can replace other conventional fill, such as expanded foam.
• Tire shreds can be used in septic tank leach fields, with an average four bedroom house using approximately 1,350 tires per system
• Other civil engineering projects utilizing tire shreds and/or crumb rubber include overpass fill, levee slurry walls (mixed with concrete), frost barriers, retaining wall fill, roadway base fill, bridge abutment fill, highway edge drains, and leachate collection and methane gas collection systems in land fills.

• Waste tires can be compressed and bound into bales. Use for tire bales include steambank erosion projects, feedlot drainage applications, livestock windbreak and corral applications, and firing range backstops.
• Crumb and granulated rubber is being recycled into molded rubber products.

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