Fact: Onyx’s incinerators produce dioxins, one of the most toxic chemicals known to humankind.

Go and type ‘dioxin’ and ‘incinerator’ into Google if you don’t believe me – you’ll find a whole lot of US incinerators have been closed down by local people in the States for this very reason.

The World Health Organisation agrees: “In terms of dioxin release into the environment, solid waste incinerators are the worst culprits.” ( http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs225/en/)

Fact: The UN has now banned dioxins, which is the worst of the ‘dirty dozen’ chemicals outlawed by the 2001 Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants.

The UN’s own press release says: “Of all the pollutants released into the environment every year by human activity, persistent organic pollutants are the most dangerous. For decades these highly toxic chemicals have killed and injured people and wildlife by inducing cancer and damaging the nervous, reproductive and immune systems. They have also caused uncounted birth defects.”

Fact: The UN Stockholm Convention commits governments to eliminating production and environmental releases of dioxins – but Sheffield Council continues to promote their production!

Fact: Dioxins accumulate in the body’s fat – and once there, they never leave. Most of it gets there through our food, since two thirds of the incinerator’s waste goes straight up into the air and out into the environment, where it enters the food chain.

Fact: Foetuses and new-born babies are most vulnerable to Dioxin's toxic effects.

Fact: The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, contained an article in May 2001 stating that teenage boys living near incinerators had smaller testicles and females had smaller breasts.

Fact: On top of all this, there is absolutely NO good reason to choose incineration as a waste strategy. Plenty of others are available – go to www.greenpeace.org.uk and do a search on incineration to find some thoroughly designed alternatives.

Fact: Once up and running, incinerators need to be kept fed with waste at full capacity – wrecking any other recycling waste strategy we might want to pursue in the future.

So – given that incineration is expensive, enormously toxic, unnecessary and stuffs up our long-term sustainability, er... why the hell do we continue to use it?

Well, there are only two possibilities, neither very comforting.

The council is thinking more about the money they receive from Onyx than the health and sustainability of Sheffield? Surely not!

Or, nobody in the council has bothered to do even basic research into the health effects of incineration, the damage to our future environmental policy, or the wealth of available alternatives.

Which do you suppose it is?

Dan Olner
Sheffield Social Forum
www.sheffieldsocialforum.org