Answer:
Social Issues and Community Interactions
This chapter examines social issues involved in the siting and operation of waste-incineration facilities (such as incinerators and industrial boilers and furnaces), including possible social, economic, and psychological effects of incineration and how these might influence community interactions and estimates of health effects. Issues with respect to perceptions and values of local residents are also considered. In addition, this chapter addresses risk communication issues and approaches for involving the general public to a greater extent in siting and other decisions concerning incineration facilities. The committee recognized at the outset of its study that the social, economic, and psychological effects for a particular waste-incineration facility might be favorable, neutral, or adverse depending on many site-specific conditions and characteristics. However, the current state of understanding for many issues considered in this chapter is such that little or no data specific to waste incineration were available for analysis by the committee. In such cases, the committee identified key issues that should be addressed in the near future.
The social, psychological, and economic impacts of incineration facilities on their locales are even less well documented and understood than the health effects of waste incineration. When environmental-impact assessments are required for proposed federal or state actions, they typically must include socioeconomic-impact assessments, but the latter are often sketchy at best. They also might be given short shrift in the decision-making process (Wolf 1980; Freudenburg 1989; Rickson et al. 1990). Furthermore, these socioeconomic assessments attempt to be prospective—that is, they assess the likely effects of proposed actions. Little research has been done to evaluate systematically the socioeco-
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Suggested Citation:"Social Issues and Community Interactions." National Research Council. 2000. Waste Incineration and Public Health. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/5803.×
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nomic impacts of controversial waste-treatment or waste-disposal facilities that have been in place for several years or more (Finsterbusch 1985; Seyfrit 1988; English et al. 1991; Freudenburg and Gramling 1992). Moreover, the committee is not aware of any studies of the effects of removing an established incinerator. One reason for the lack of cumulative, retrospective socioeconomic-impact research is the lack of sufficient data. Although incineration facilities must routinely monitor and record emissions of specified pollutants, health-monitoring studies before or after a facility begins operation are only rarely performed, and periodic studies of the socioeconomic impacts of a facility over time are virtually nonexistent, partly because of methodological problems (Armour 1988) and the absence of regulations that necessitate continued monitoring of socioeconomic impacts.
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