ABSTRACT
338Garbage management is an issue of growing concern nowadays due to the rapid growth of urban populations and changing consumption patterns. The environmental implications and impact on health and consequences on food safety associated with waste management need an urgent attention, particularly in low-income countries where waste removal and management facilities are often inadequate or missing.
In response to the lack of infrastructures, people often use a hazardous practice of burning to eliminate solid waste. Nevertheless, burning garbage is a source of several and diverse pollutants, including dioxins and related compounds (polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and furans, polychlorinated biphenyls, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, polybrominated diphenyl ethers), particulate chloride, carbon monoxide, and toxic elements, these latter also as nanoparticles. Hazardous residues of burning can affect human health directly, through inhalation, or indirectly, through ingestion of contaminated food. Food can be contaminated directly through the fallout of smoke and ash on food displayed on street vending stalls; in the meanwhile, long-range environmental pollution of food chains may occur through the uptake of hazardous substances by crops from polluted soil and groundwater or their carryover to animals and animal products via contaminated feed.
The aim of this chapter is to review the toxicological risks of residues in foods from domestic and outdoor solid waste burning in the low-income countries scenarios. In particular, we will explore the potential for food contamination and the associated health hazards from the burning by-products of different solid waste not only such as rubber and leather, plastics, metal, electronic waste but also organic residues, including agricultural residues and food waste. A special attention is given to vulnerable groups of population, that is, young children, pregnant women, the elderly, or immunocompromised people that are exposed to these pollutants.
