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Jace · 06-10-2004, 01:55 PM

also found this that someone wrote about that penn and teller episode

Quote:

Penn & Teller made some good points. They talked about the hidden costs of recycling such as transportation and processing. They pointed out that more energy is required to recycle plastics than to create the same products from scratch. They also stated that landfills take up far less room than you would expect and showed just how clean the most modern and well kept landfills can be.

Unfortunately, there was a lot left unsaid. Penn & Teller never talked about the fact that not all landfills around the country are such paragons of virtue as the one the showed. The failed to point out that trash incinerators can spew large amounts of heavy metals such as lead and other pollutants into the air.

Penn & Teller did acknowledge that it makes a lot of sense to recycle aluminum since it costs far more to make aluminum from bauxite ore than to recyle it. It was more of a footnote to ward off rants than anything else, it seemed.

Penn & Teller didn't talk at all about the fact that the oil that is used to make plastics is not a renewable resource. It's finite. It's likely that unless consumption drops the vast majority of the worlds oil reserves will be consumed before the end of this century.

It's true that we aren't likely to be buried by our own trash anytime soon, but it's also true that there are serious drawbacks to using landfills as the way to dispose of all our trash. The areas used for landfills become contaminated with heavy metals such as lead and cadmium. Toxic wastes accumulate and pool at the bottom of the land fill where they are prevented from entering the water supply by a layer of clay and one or more plastic liners.

If you look at how modern landfills are designed and built, it's initially quite reassuring. That is until you realize that in order for a landfill to work correctly, it has to prevent the toxic materials from entering the water supply FOREVER. Lead and cadmium and other heavy metals never lose their toxicity. In that respect they are more dangerous than some radioactive waste. At least a lot of radioactive waste, the waste not made up of toxic elements, will eventually become harmless. Not true of the heavy metals trapped in landfills.

There are already landfills that are leaking toxic materials into watersupplies. It costs money to clean them up. Eventually, every landfill will fail. Nothing can last forever. Every landfill we build is a cost we are passing on to our decendents.

Now landfills aren't all bad. As Penn & Teller pointed out, a properly managed landfill can even produce methane gas that can be harvested and used to produce energy. The waste products from burning methane are mostly water and carbon dioxide. Landfills have also been examined by archeolgists in order to learn about our own culture. Newspapers over 100 years old have been found in great condition buried deep in landfills. It's even conceivable that landfills might someday provide a place that can be mined for resources that have grown scarce elsewhere.

I once worked in an office downwind of the landfill for the county and the incinerator. Some folks from Greenpeace visited the area while I was there with some equipment to measure the emissions from the incinerator and demonstrated that the air downwind was heavily contaminated with lead and other heavy metals. The EPA later came in and confirmed it. While I worked at that company I know that nine women who worked their became pregnant. Before I'd left, six had lost their babies either to miscarriage or the infant died during birth. I later heard that the other three women lost their children too. All these women were in their prime child bearing years. Perhaps it was a statistical fluke but I suspect that being exposed to high levels of heavy metals in the air during pregnancy isn't good for mother or for the baby.

I'm disappointed that Penn & Teller didn't give a more balanced representation of the issues. I hope that they will do a better job in future shows.