Uncontrolled combustion of shredded tires in a landfill -Part 2: Population exposure, public health response, and an air quality index for urban fires.

ABSTRACT: The Iowa City Landfill in eastern Iowa, United States, experienced a fire lasting 18 days in 2012, in which a drainage layer of over 1 million shredded tires burned, generating smoke that impacted the surrounding metropolitan area of 130,000 people. This emergency required air monitoring, risk assessment, dispersion modeling, and public notification. This paper quantifies the impact of the fire on local air quality and proposes a monitoring approach and an Air Quality Index (AQI) for use in future tire fires and other urban fires. Individual fire pollutants are ranked for acute and cancer relative risks using hazard ratios, with the highest acute hazard ratios attributed to SO₂, particulate matter, and aldehydes. Using a dispersion model in conjunction with the new AQI, we estim

SUBMITTER: Singh A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4304096 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature