Status of US EPA's (Environmental Protection Agency's) sludge-incinerator regulations

This report describes a potential regulatory approach that the U.S. EPA could use for controlling sewage-sludge incinerators. The approach utilizes a most-exposed individual risk assessment to ensure that sludge-incineration air emissions will not cause an unacceptable health risk. An incinerator facility can demonstrate compliance using a three-tiered system which proceeds from a simple worst case calculation to a more resource intensive site-specific demonstration. A key part of the tiering system is development of an accurate and reliable emissions data base for U.S. sludge incinerators that can be used to develop reasonable worst case emission-control factors. The results of testing to date are discussed in the paper.