Posted on 10/15/2009 4:45:36 AM PDT by xcamel
ALBANY -- An artifact of life in the country, the backyard burn barrel, came to an end Wednesday under new state environmental rules.
Outdoor waste burning is now banned in all towns, regardless of population. Such burning has been illegal in towns of 20,000 people or more since 1972.
DEC said the tougher rules are needed because burning of waste can release harmful chemicals like dioxins into the air, in large part because barrels burn at much lower temperatures than commercial incinerators, allowing dangerous compounds to escape destruction.
"The greatest source of dioxin exposure in New York today is the dioxin that is formed from backyard burn barrels," said Dr. David Carpenter, Director of the Institute for Health and the Environment at the University at Albany, who spoke Wednesday at a news conference in the Capitol of environmental activists who support the new law.
"Dioxin is a proven human carcinogen, and also increases the risk of a number of other diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and altered endocrine function. It is a major advance to ban back-yard burning in New York," Carpenter said.
To support its decision, DEC cited a study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which found that emissions of dioxins and furans from backyard burning alone were greater than those from all other sources combined for the years 2002-04.
Trash containing plastics, polystyrene, pressure-treated and painted wood and bleached or colored papers produce harmful chemicals when burned. The study found that burns emit arsenic, carbon monoxide, benzene, styrene, formaldehyde, lead, and hydrogen cyanide.
The ban excludes camp or cooking fires, celebratory bonfires, smudge pots to prevent frost damage to crops, and disposal of tree limbs and branches between May and March.
Towns totally or partially within the boundaries of the Adirondack and Catskill parks are designated fire towns under Environmental Conservation Law. The law prohibits open burning without a written permit from the DEC.
Polyvinyl chloride releases dioxin when burned. This is an undeniable scientific fact.
Unenforcable jack ass law! Typical of a government which has not had a good idea for over 50 years. They are the most knee-jerk emotalaw-makers in the country next to California Commies.
A favorite source of income for many in Alaska is to sell along the highways is pre-drilled burn barrels made from 55 gallon drums.
yeah its tougher Alaska...
Still though Anchorage may someday erect castle walls to keep its liberalmites from escaping to the wilds of rural conservative Alaska.
So I guess that whole “biomass” thing is out the window?
Unless you enrich someone else to burn your trash
For now....
These people want everything banned.
http://burningissues.org/car-www/index.html
I’m a New Yorker with a burn barrel in my yard. This article is nebulous...are they banning the burn barrel or the fires? We don’t burn garbage but we do burn large cardboard boxes, construction debris, and brush. I suppose I’ll get a chance to test this law soon enough...
Seems so..
They really want to kill off the outside furnaces that can and will “burn anything”
I have a 55 gallon burn barrel and an area where I burn tree limbs.
Trying to leave a HUGE carbon print here folks.
Also most folks where I live have at least 3 to 10 acres and they ALL burn piles of limbs etc.
Get the govt. out of our lives.
Burn barrels = great fun when I grew up.
A cup of gas, a match, throw the match, and if the gas had seeped down into the burn barrel, whoom, like a cannon out came your garbage.
Had an old uncle on their farm who would always use too much gas in their big burn barrel. He also had had a stroke so we walked so slow. Threw the gas on the burn barrel, messed with the matches, threw the match, tried to walk away and it was like a small stick of dynamite going off. Garbage everywhere. My old uncle just looked up and said “what the hell”. He like that saying “what the hell”.
I’ve been to areas of NY that are beyond the city snowplowing. How the f**k are the people I know up there going to dispose of garbage from December to March?
Another concern in an area as dry as we've been is burning on windy days where sparks from even a burn barrel could escape it's confines.
We had an old guy who lives in the river valley below our neighborhood decide to burn his trash (in a barrel) on a day of 40+ mph winds. It quickly got out of control.
The Fire Dept came and warned us that if the winds changed, the fire could sweep up the hillside and put us in danger.
Luckily the wind relaxed and they were able to keep the fire under control, only burning a couple of fields and a few privacy fences.
It's idiots like this old guy who *spark* these sort of laws and ruin the convenience for the rest of us.
Out here along the Yukon, we don’t have any local regulations, or comprehensive planning, or any local organized government, or any taxes to fund growth of possible future govt, or any law enforcement (nearest state boys 200 miles away and they don’t come out here very often) to enforce any state laws that might ever be enacted;; but then Alaska is quite anti regulation on state level anyway. Most importantly is that mindset of what a man does in his own house is his own busines; keeps everything quite free. Now if we could do something about that minus 65 that will hit in a couple months.
So does firewood. ANY relatively "low temperature" fire in which the substance burning contains chlorine (which is everything that lives), emits some level of CHLORINATED dioxin. It's the CHLORINATED stuff that is supposed to be bad, but the fools at the EPA wrote the rules so that the non-chlorinated species are also "banned". And for God's sake, NEVER burn seawater driftwood. Look up an article entitled "Trace Chemistries of Fire".
I’m not sure if burn barrels are legal in my state or not (WV) and really don’t care. I burn anything that can be burned to save me the trouble of lugging trash to the end of the dirt road where I live, which is as far as the trash truck runs. I’m not particularly worried about being ticketed. I chain up and lock the cattle gate at the end of my driveway when I burn, and it’s nearly a 3/4 mile hike on a really steep driveway to reach my residence. I’m betting the 300+ lb tubs of lard that work for state aren’t going to make the hike to see if I’m burning trash or having a cookout.
It's a question of degree.
I fully expect them to ban our burn barrels as well. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.
They’ve outlawed leaf burning where I live because a few whiners complained about the smell, even though we were already limited to three days a week. They were helpful enough, however, to offer to vaccuum them up, for a small fee of course.
I am getting damn sick and tired of these nanny-state politicians telling us what we can and can’t do on our own freakin’ property. Enough is enough.
Doesn't matter. ANY fire that results in incomplete combustion (i.e. "smoke") produces dioxins, and if there is chloride (i.e. salt) present, then it produces chlorinated dioxins as well.
I miss the smell of burning leaves in the fall.....
No, it's a question of bad laws and bad science. There is so little chlorinated material in most trash that it is of no particular environmental consequence, since natural fires are the source of most dioxin in nature (see "forest fire"). I wonder if anyone down in California has bothered to sample their air lately for "dioxins">
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