BACKGROUND Finnish and Swedish waste water systems used by the forest industry were found to be exceptionally heavily contaminated with legionellae in 2005. CASE PRESENTATION We report two cases of severe pneumonia in employees working at two separate mills in Finland in 2006. Legionella serological and urinary antigen tests were used to diagnose Legionnaires' disease in the symptomatic emplo...

Selected waste management scenarios were evaluated with regard to the goals of the Austrian Waste Management Act, taking into account long-term environmental protection and resource conservation as well as costs. Municipal solid waste (MSW) and sewage sludge have been chosen as the system inputs. The scenarios were compared to the status-quo scenario by combining Material Flow Analysis (MFA) an...

The environmental performance of industrial anaerobic digestion (AD), pyrolysis, and integrated system (AD sequence with pyrolysis) on food waste treatment were evaluated using life cycle assessment. The integrated treatment system indicated similar environmental benefits to AD with the highest benefits in climate change and water depletion in addition to the increased energy generation potenti...

Hazardous waste management incorporates collection, separation, treatment, recycling and disposal of hazardous wastes. In this paper, a new multi-objective mixed integer model is presented for hazardous waste collection problem. The model aims to minimize transportation and construction costs, and environmental and population risks in hazardous waste management systems. This model is applied in...

The food processing industry is very diverse. The diversity of the industry is apparent not only by the vast array of final products but also by the waste generated. Food processing waste, though not considered to be a health hazard, can be formidable in the quantities generated. Even the smallest seasonal plant is capable of producing waste loads equivalent to a population of 15,000-25,000 peo...