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Potential Impacts of Landfill Gas

Landfill gas causes quite a list of possible impacts. It is flammable, water vapour saturated and odorous, and if it escapes the landfill it can be a hazard as well as a nuisance to the local community. Landfill gas can also result in local air pollution, as well as harming the global environment due to the presence of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane.  The potential impacts of landfill gas can be summarized as follows:

Hazards:

Methane is flammable when mixed with air and can cause an explosion in a confined space, providing that there is a source of ignition.  Landfill gas can displace air (oxygen) causing a risk of asphyxiation to anybody entering the confined space.  The ability of landfill gas to migrate from a landfill is dependent on many factors including viscosity and diffusivity of the gas itself, the physical characteristics of the waste (permeability, moisture content and porosity), as well as atmospheric temperature, pressure and gas concentration gradients.

The potential for Landfill gas to migrate from the landfill and cause a hazard to surrounding property was the initial reason for the development of Landfill gas extraction and control systems, and the many cases where during the 1980s in the UK, migration incidents occurred are well documented.

Nuisance:

The biggest nuisance emission is odour. Trace compounds in Landfill gas can be very malodorous, thereby causing nuisance to local communities. 

Local environment damage:

The displacement of oxygen by Landfill gas in the soil can induce plant phytotoxicity, where vegetation damage is a useful indicator of Landfill gas migration from a site.  In addition, condensate needs to be removed from the saturated gas before it is burnt, and this concentrate is highly corrosive and must be properly disposed.

Global environment damage:

Methane is a greenhouse gas which has an effect thirty times greater than the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide.  Landfill sites are a major contributor to the global greenhouse effect (although not as significant as carbon dioxide from industry and transport), and the methane (Landfill gas) should be burnt and not allowed to vent to atmosphere.

Potential health effects:

Minor constituents of Landfill gas can potentially have toxic effects but are rarely present in sufficient concentrations to present a health hazard. 

However, there is increasing concern for people living near landfill sites (e.g. in developing nations) if subjected to a continual localized presence landfill gas in air at inhalation height.

The European Union Directive on the Landfilling of Waste which was passed by Council in April 1999 and has been applied across the 15 European Union countries since April 2001 prevents sites being operated by free venting.

It requires all new non-hazardous landfill sites to be at least 500m from property, and new hazardous landfill sites to be at least 2km from property.

All landfill site owners and operators should take landfill gas seriously and this list of impacts shows why.

 

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