Leachate:
“Leachate is the liquid that is produced when rain falls on a landfill, sinks into the wastes, and picks up chemicals as it seeps downward.”[1]
Texas A&M University compared leachate from municipal landfills with leachate from hazardous waste landfills and have found,"...There is ample evidence that the municipal waste landfill leachates contain toxic chemicals in sufficient concentration to be potentially as harmful as leachate from industrial waste landfills."
Dr. Kirk Brown and Dr. K.C. Donnelly at Texas A&M, authors of the new study, examined data on the composition of leachate from 58 landfills. The data they reviewed showed 113 different toxic chemicals in leachate from municipal landfills and 72 toxic chemicals in leachate from hazardous waste landfills. The abundance of toxics in municipal landfills probably occurs because the entire spectrum of consumer products ends up in municipal landfills, whereas hazardous waste landfills serve a limited number of industries within a region.
The most likely source of most of the toxic materials in municipal landfills is household products like paint solvents, oils, cleaning compounds, degreasing compounds, and pesticides. "In addition, the final depository of most of the products of our modern industrial society is the municipal waste landfill where the paints, plastics, and pharmaceuticals dissolve and degrade in the acidic anaerobic [oxygen-free] environment, thereby, releasing degradation products which may be even more toxic than the products from which they originated," say Brown and Donnelly.
For More
Information
JOURNAL OF GROUND WATER: “Application of Hydrogeology to the Selection of Refuse Disposal Sites,” Ronald A. Landon, Vol. 7 (Nov.-Dec., 1969), pgs. 9-13
HAZARDOUS WASTES AND HAZARDOUS MATERIALS : "An Estimation of the Risk Associated with the Organic Constituents of Hazardous and Municipal Waste Landfill Leachates,” Dr. Kirk Brown and Dr. K.C. Donnelly, Vol. 5, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pgs. 1-30.
Request a free reprint from Dr. Kirk Brown, Soil and Crop Sciences Department, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843. Phone (409) 845-5201.