Air Pollution Impact of Medical Waste Incineration in Semi-Arid Areas

Breeze AERMOD software is used to predict the impacts of medical waste incineration on ambient air quality in a semi-arid region of Jordan. The air quality impact is evaluated based on the predicted concentrations of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and carbon monoxide. Procured results reveal that the maximum average predicted concentrations of the three oxides are below their corresponding national and international standards and are expected to occur at a short distance of about 200m downwind from the incinerator main stack. The screening option in the model is used to calculate the hourly concentration at worst conditions for each month. Most of the maximum concentrations occur at nighttime hours (18:00 and 00:00 GMT), where stable conditions dominate the tropospheric boundary layer. The adequacy of AERMOD is also evaluated by comparing the predicted concentrations against measured values of the three criteria oxides. The findings demonstrated great deal of agreement between predicted and measured concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (R^2= 0.94), and carbon monoxide (R^2 = 0.98). However, predicted sulfur dioxide showed a lower correlation with the measured data (R^2 = 0.49).