Dioxin is one of the main reasons that people say backyard trash burning is dangerous and a serious pollutant. Scientists note that dioxin is a known endocrine disrupter and now a known carcinogen, according to the EPA.

They also point out that modern incinerators don't bleach this chemical out in the unchecked fashion that ones did a decade ago, when we started to get concerned about dioxin pollution. There are other pollutants caused by burning trash but somehow the activists seem to ignore them, and corporations with massive incinerators prefer to downplay them.

So where does all of this dioxin go on modern incinerators? Some claim the high temperature they burn at reduces dioxin pollution, though recent studies cast doubt on it. Hotter fires have less smoke (toss some plastic in a roaring campfire), but they still have a real dioxin producing potential. Much of that dioxin is being caught in filters, as as municipal waste incinerators have gotten cleaner over the years, they have been using bag houses, and other wet filters that pull out a great of the particulate that normally goes up into the air. Since the Clean Air Act of 1990, particulate matter standards as judged by stack opaqueness restrictions have toughened up mandating such technology be used.

It seems that dioxin likes to attach itself to particulate, that thick black smoke you get when burning lots of plastic in your burn barrel or far more thick black smoke from burning municipal trash even at high temperatures. High temperatures destroy some of the smoke and prevent dioxin from being formed, but it's not really disposing of all of it. When you capture that particulate with the bag house, your also cutting dioxin to levels that are considered acceptable risk by the EPA. That doesn't mean it's a particularly good solution though or that it actually contains the dioxin from ultimately getting into the environment.

More then 80% of dioxin is trapped in emissions equipment on modern incinerators. This dioxin is not included in the stack emissions, instead it is stored as fly ash to be disposed at nearby landfills as “special” but not-hazardous waste by mixing it with bottom waste (nonburnable garbage). While it not be might be directly spewed, the dioxin is still created and it's likely to leaches out through methane gas or ground water containment. You simply can't get rid of the by products of burning massive amounts of trash.

The reality is that municipal waste incinerators are really dirty and dangerous compared to backyard trash burning. Nobody particularly likes the stinky smoke of any kind of garbage fire, but it seems that municipal incinerators are truly dirty. Besides dioxin, municipal incinerators still do a relatively poor job at controlling pollutants like acid rain causing sulfur dioxides and nitrous oxides. According to an NYPIRG report, the acid rain causing emissions of an municipal incinerator is like the cars and trucks of 20,000 people. We simply don't need any more acid rain poisoning our fishing ponds.