It's about that time for me to take another revist of the burn barrel legislation that will inevitably be resummitted this year in the legislature. My previous opposition has been well documented around here, this time I'm going to take another, closer and different perspective to the bill. I like this issue in particular, as it's a piece of legislation I've learned quite a bit over the past few years, and I have a pretty good knowledge of solid waste and recycling issues. Plus it's really rednecky, and fits perfectly with the theme of the site. This is another one of those well edited fodders, so some pieces might be missing or just wrong—that's what happens when an essay lingers on for 6 long months.

Urban Misunderstandings

Urbanites are right in saying that people's desire to play with matches is irrational. I think it would be difficult to argue anything differently. It's a personal ideosyncracy, it's what gives us personality and flavor. The reasons for playing with fire are obvious: it gives us feelings of power, it's bright, it consumes, and gosh I don't know—a dozen other things—as us pyros all so well know. We know that there is little need for uncontrolled and open fires anymore—the internal combustion engine, oil and gas funarances, electric power generated by massive power stations, landfills and muncipal incinerators—all replace the need for unpredictable dirty combustion.

For the most part in our cities, all forms of combustion are regulated: be it cars, factories, heat systems, almost anything. There is no longer any form of the irrational: the amount of pollution is too high in urban and suburban areas to permit that. Alas, diesel construction equipment and diesel tractor-trailers are exceptions to this rule, but even these loopholes are not technically open burning—would you call the combustion of diesel inside an engine not a carefully controlled reaction? Similarly, some suburbs allow people to have woodstoves (more on this later).

The argument then goes for burbanites in politics that there really is no need for burning stuff. And they are right—ignoring the afformentioned factors. They aren't used to playing with fire, and they are happy with their pollution controls. They are unaware of fire. Fire is warm, bright, and fun a cool summer night—you know how this goes. People like fire. Yet, at the same time, the use of fire is limited there—you may be able to use open fire for heat, cooking, and disposal of trash, but there is a lot of things you can burn. It seems as though rationalism has long grasp and controlled all of soicety.

So how do we overcome our love for open fires without need for pollution control (even in rural areas—we can make some pretty nasty pollution burning some construction debris or things like tires), and need for protection of public and private property (ie. not burning down other peoples houses)? Also we have to fear routinization generating rationalization. The seemingly innocent burn barrel or woodstove can be deadly and destructive, if people ignore the amazing powers of fire. Many houses have burned down from both of things, to say nothing about 'careless' brush fires. But open fire as a routine activity, such as burning trash, can become dangerous, when people forget how dangerous and alive fire truly is.

Instrumentalism of Health Policy

Instrumentalism certainly has an important role in deciding health policy: the ends are potentially so severe, they scare the heck out of us. People say look what's in modern solid waste, and what these people are producing when they burn trash: be it heavy metals, dioxin, and dozens of other chemicals. They scream and try to run away, into a far away corner when they start hearing about the possibility of cancer, a fear of many Americans, one we really don't understand. We understand many of the potential risk factors for cancer, but we really don't understand the problem as a whole. Fear is an interesting notion, one that unfortunately drives a lot of society. We don't like unpredictability, so we rationalize using frameworks of control and dominance—at least that makes us feel as though our world is safe and predictabile. But it's not.

Will banning open burning save a lot of lives? You listen to Environmental Advocates of NY, NYPIRG, or Peter I. of American Lung Association, you'd surely think so. But I have my doubts. For one it's easy to be cynical about the science of the issue—we understand that certain forces with a good probably may lead up to cancer (although many with a lesser probablity then claimed), but we have no idea what exactly causes cancer—the uncontrolled growth of cells.

Some claim dioxin, a chemical called an endocrine disrupter, is one of the chemicals that potentially cause cancer—at any rate, it sticks in our blood stream for a long time—sometimes 10 or 15 years even. Dioxin is formed by a certain heavy form of chlorine and carbon mocules mixing in a specific form, typically caused by the same kind of combustion that any fire (including diesel engines) produces when black smoke is released. Vinyl, containing a large amount of clorine is often of particular suspect and target of environmentalists—it burns really black (with green flames)—and it's hard to burn without a siginificant fire under it. That's the stuff that they side people's houses with nowdays, and it all too often goes up into smoke when houses burn or people clean up contruction debris with matches (instead of landfilling it). Fortunely, the use of vinyl in disposable packaging is pretty rare (thanks to laws on the book that often prohibit it) .

Urban Society and Trash Day

It's trash day, let's take our trash to the street corner. Some person with his big trash truck will come and take our unusuables away and dispose of them for us—recycling exists, but at best as a secondary notion, some for a minority of household goods—the rest is just trash, destine for the landfill. I guess this has always been the notion we have live around, this is the way life has always been. You can't have trash piling up in urban areas for reasons, and air quality seems to prohibit buring on the street corner (can you imagine the stench, the dirtiness and the pollution in the area)?

Admitly, rural society is probably no better, if not worst. If you want to give a recycling award to anyone, it would be suburban society—typically upper middle classers do the best when it comes to recycling, as they have money to throw around for such a 'luxury'. But they aren't really much better, living in a culture that glorifies consumption and tossing (even if a third to a half of it is recycled—the rest is sent off to the landfill). Certainly people with burn barrels are no better off, as most of them don't give a damn about the environment—they just like to toss and set on fire—the hell with recycling for them. They're backwoods hicks, not environmentalists for sure.

More Dangerous, Says Who?

The argument that burning trash is much more dangerous then yesteryear, does not hold the weight that some proponets of the burning barrel legislation claim it has. We've already banned all kinds of really nasty stuff from our regular disposables. Lead based ink in newsprint and paperboard for the most part is history. Lead ink was phased out in the 1970s, especially for newsprint. And you can't argue that paper products are not a stable of what people are burning.

Tin cans don't contain the large amounts of tin, zinc and many other heavy metals they once did. New York in 1991 required the manufatures greatly reduce the amount of such chemicals. So people burning tin cans to get the coating off them to biodegrade aren't posioning the planet the way they once were.

Plastics is another issue, but even that one has some postitive news: PVC plastic (Type 3) known to us laymen as vinyl is becoming more nortious and to a certain degree less common then it once, at least for disposable packages that people are burning. A lot of HDPE, a common kind of plastic, has a lot of benezne, that makes burning trash such a rather stinky business—not to mention potentially hazardous: beneze fixates the hairs in your lungs that are suppost to keep dirt, carbon and other crap out of your lungs. The same stuff is in cigerates, but at lower levels so it's less odorous like gasoline.

Of course, a couple years back, being a true yahoo, and burning all kinds of plastic toys and other trash, I took a nice deep breath of smoke (purposely—I'm crazy ;) of that thick black smoke, and I enjoyed a September 11th-like cough for several days. But I got over it, and I didn't die. So that's not recommended. And the dioxin issue continues to persist (not unlike dioxin). The people over a junkscience have their doubts on dioxin, and so do I—but at any rate, one should always weight the risk of cancer versus more solid waste and it's result of more landfilling and hauling costs—not to mention the fun of playing with fire.

How Many People Burn and the Effect

As many of you know, the current prohibition on trash burning applies solely to cities with populations larger then 20,000—everybody else can burn, although county and local laws really don't make that as true as it might seem. As many of you, know around 90% of New York's landmass qualifies as defacto rural. The EPA estimates roughly 40% of the solid waste in rural communties is burned in burn barrels. If such numbers show anything, it is that rural means rural—not a lot of people around. New York's urban areas are relatively small compared to all that country that is still is around in upstate New York (even if it's shrinking at a frigthening rate).

But at the same time the 90% of the total land area number might be a little bit too aggressive. Many towns already ban trash burning, far under the 20,000 limit—or provide trash curbside pickup (which doesn't stop the many pyromanacs but it creates a disinsentive to burn—which may or may not be more a bad thing). If anything, AB 5884 will just lead to more solid waste—I'm not counting burners as particularly good recyclers, for obvious reasons. It's just bad policy—dioxin might last 10-15 years and tin cans will rust away in that period, but landfilled, the trash will be around forever.

Burn Barrels and the Law

Many states (actually now, a majority of states) have banned burn barrels for good—don't get caught with the match, as they say. Of course, one has to wonder how effective such laws are, particularly at the state level. I like to take the example of Vermont, and my personal experience driving around rural Vermont—it seems that while the law exists on paper, it is rarely enforced.

Figuring New York is a far bigger state, and the DEC police are rather over taxed, it's not like they will be able to offer many citations. Certainly, local government can enforce such a law, but many already do. NYCRR 12 Part 215 specifically bans open burning in cities with a population greater then 20,000—but it leaves small towns and villages to decide based on local government's own decision. The Republican majority in the State Senate says they are happy with the way things are now, and if localities want to decide to ban burn barrels, all the more power to them. Let them decide how they want to spend their money.

At any rate, do we need more new laws on the books, that will never be fairly or well enforced, not unlike many of the existing laws in New York. Good laws should exist in a fashion where they are unobtrusive, and are just respected—and that enforcement only is neccessary for the most deviant of personalities. We don't need laws that exist to control the masses of New Yorkers, instead of them controlling thereselves (see Principles and Politics for my concept of the autonomous individual).

Conclusions

People's love of fire probably drives the desire for burning trash. It seems rather impossible to stop people from doing it, at best a bill like Assemblywomen Destito's burn barrel education bill might make people turn away. I just don't see the problem going away, and when I do see burn barrels being replaced with trash cans, the result inevitably is more garbage in our landfills. I don't like the smell of trash smoke, but I really do not like the look of landfilling. At the end of the day, I say live and let live.