This Household Waste Can Kill -- Common Home Products Are Still Poisoning Many American Landfills

Gregory B. Lie knew he had a problem when the bomb squad said it was too dangerous to blow up an old can of fumigant.

A farmer who had found the can while cleaning out his barn just west of Minneapolis had turned the still-sealed quart-size container of Zyklon Discoid in to the Hennepin County hazardous waste management program.

As the program's supervisor, Lie had to figure out how to dispose of it safely.

Zyklon Discoid looks innocent enough - like charcoal briquets - but these chunks were soaked with hydrocyanic acid. Throw water on them, and they give off hydrogen cyanide gas like that used in Nazi death chambers.

Back in the 1950s, Zyklon Discoid was sold for a few years to farmers who donned gas masks, then released the poisonous gas inside barns and grain silos to kill rodents and other pests.

Like the bomb squad, Hennepin County's hazardous waste contractor refused to handle Zyklon Discoid. So after consulting with American Cyanamid, the manufacturer, Lie and chemists who work for him donned air packs and "moon suits," opened the can out in a field and set the gas off where the wind wafted it harmlessly skyward.

Not all hazardous wastes are as deadly as Zyklon Discoid. But many products that ordinary Americans use all the time contain the same toxic, explosive and corrosive chemicals found in high-volume industrial byproducts.

Law doesn't apply at home

Federal law requires big industries to track the hazardous chemicals they use and dispose of them at specially equipped landfills and incinerators. But those regulations don't apply to homeowners or small businesses that generate only a few pounds or gallons of waste each month.

Most of those hazardous wastes end up buried at the municipal dump or flowing through municipal sewage treatment plants not equipped to remove them.

Around the country, governments are spending heavily on collection drives to keep homeowners from simply pouring leftover pesticides down the drain or tossing spent batteries and half-empty gallons of paint into the trash.

More than 800 city and county governments conducted collection drives last year, and some are expanding the programs to take hazardous wastes from dry cleaners, gas stations, painting contractors and other small firms.

While even the most aggressive collection programs now reach only small percentages of homes and businesses, governments are coming under increasing legal pressure to put household hazardous waste programs in place as a matter of financial self-defense.

Industry and municipal officials are sparring in the courts over how much contamination at old solid waste dumps listed as federal Superfund sites can be blamed on common household and commercial trash laced with toxic substances.

Corporations saddled with massive cleanup costs are declaring local governments fair game for legal action that aims to spread that burden as far and wide as possible. As things stand, local governments could be held at least partly responsible for cleaning up one-third of the 1,200 federal Superfund sites that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has targeted.

EPA drafts policy

EPA has drafted a proposed policy that would limit municipal government liability to 4 percent of cleanup costs at a Superfund site, a figure that city and county organizations say they could live with. But the White House held up approval of that proposal this spring.

Nobody really knows how much of the trash stream is hazardous. Some studies have found that between 0.3 percent and 0.4 percent of the municipal solid waste stream is composed of substances that the Superfund law defines as hazardous. Others place the figure as high as 5 percent.

Americans routinely use an array of products that produce hazardous waste when they are discarded. U.S. consumers, for example, use up more than 2.5 billion dry cell batteries each year to power flashlights, tools, toys and other devices. Discarded batteries are the single largest source of mercury in municipal solid waste.

Lawn and garden-care products include pesticides containing various toxic chemicals and fertilizers made from ammonia, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Do-it-yourself auto mechanics drain more than 200 million gallons of used motor oil from crankcases each year but recycle less than 10 percent of it. Old cans of lead-based paint are still out there, and some latex and oil-based paints are still made with lead and mercury.

A host of liquid and solid cleaners, disinfectants, polishes, drain openers, cosmetics and other products are made from corrosive agents that can form dangerous reactions when mixed together.

Researchers sorting through rubbish have calculated that the average American home throws out 15 pounds of hazardous waste a year.

Keeping such waste out of the landfill or sewage treatment plants is no simple task. Communities generally start by holding one-day "events" giving residents a chance to drop hazardous wastes off at temporary stations. But governments in 96 communities have now followed up by maintaining permanent collection facilities open at least once a month.

Progress in Anchorage

To protect a new landfill - and help make a $100 million upgrade in sewage treatment capacity unnecessary - Anchorage, Alaska, in 1989 opened a permanent program for collecting both residential and small-business hazardous wastes. During the program's first three years, Anchorage collected 2 million pounds, with small businesses bringing in roughly half the total.

Florida's Department of Environmental Regulation, trying to prevent contamination of shallow groundwater tables beneath sandy soils, has given $100,000 grants to 40 of the state's 67 counties to set up permanent household hazardous waste collection systems.

In Southern California, San Bernardino County now operates 10 permanent household hazardous waste collection sites, conducts a dozen one-day drives a year, runs radio spots and school programs, and sends a "Haz-Man" character to street fairs and other community events to promote household hazardous waste management efforts. Even so, last year just 15,000 households took part, out of a population of 1.5 million. "I don't think we've gotten the whole tip of the iceberg yet," acknowledges Judith Orttung, who supervises the county's program.

In Minnesota, Hennepin County's collection effort, one of the country's most successful, is expected to reach 20,000 households this year, but that amounts to just 5 percent of the county's 340,000 homes.

Even if only small amounts come in, some officials hope that well-publicized collection programs at least will persuade consumers to buy less hazardous products. And unless Congress changes the Superfund law, local governments may feel compelled to mount aggressive household hazardous waste collection campaigns as their best defense against cleanup liability.

---------------------------------------- Hazardous content of common household products

AIR FRESHENER

Alkyl phenoxy polyethoxy ethanol

Isobutane

Propane

GLUE

Acetone

Asbestos fiber (asbestos cement)

Hexane

Methylene chloride

Methyl ethyl ketone

Toluene

PAINT THINNER AND STRIPPER

Alcohols

Chlorinated aliphatic hydrocarbons

Chlorinated aromatic hydrocarbons

Esters

Ketones

Toluene

TOILET BOWL CLEANER

Chlorinated phenols

Sodium acid sulfate or oxalate or hydrochloric acid

Trichloro-s-triazinetrione

AUTOMOTIVE ANTIFREEZE/COOLANT

Ethylene glycol

Methanol

Auto wax

Petroleum distillates

DRAIN OPENER

Hydrochloric acid

Potassium hydroxide

Sodium hydroxide

PESTICIDES

Aromatic petroleum hydrocarbons

Carbamates

Chlorinated hydrocarbons

Coumarin

Naphthalene

Organophosphorus

Petroleum distillates

Triazine base

Uracil

Urea

Xylene

PET FLEA AND TICK TREATMENT

Carbaryl

Chlordane

Dichlorophene

Other chlorinated hydrocarbons

(Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report to Congress: "Solid Waste Disposal in the United States")