A,n approach based on human health risk analysis to manage an old landfill and to propose integrated solid waste treatment

Nowadays, the importance of recycle and energy savings is increasing due to the current economic and environmental situation. The aim of the present work is to show how an approach based on human health and air/water risk analysis can be used as a decisional tool for the evaluation of environmental impacts and for deciding between different waste treatment processes. The situation in which the increasing production of solid wastes cannot be confined in the old existing Municipal Solid Waste landfill (settled in Genoa, Liguria Region, Italy) is used as a case study. Risk assessment of the landfill for human health, air, groundwater and surface water is performed in different scenarios and compared with alternative waste-to-energy management solutions that consider thermal treatment of the total waste by incineration; by gasification and by thermal treatment of the dry fraction coupled with anaerobic digestion of the wet fraction. KEYWORDS: