Clearing the air: Ordinary citizens uncover toxic truths near waste incinerators

MANILA, Philippines —A group of ordinary citizens in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental spent weeks carrying palm-sized devices, quietly gathering evidence of something they could already see and feel: the thick haze drifting from a controversial waste facility in their neighborhood.

In their homes, in small stores, and along busy roads, volunteers from all walks of life—storekeepers, students, waste workers—watched as the monitors blinked, counted, and recorded.

They weren’t scientists, but their mission was scientific: capture, for the first time, hard data about what happens to the air they breathe when waste is burned just down the road.

They were not alone. Across Surabaya, Indonesia and Ogijo, Nigeria, parallel teams of local volunteers joined the world’s first cross-regional, citizen-powered study of air quality near waste incineration plants in the Global South.

Their findings cut through political promises and technical jargon to reveal a simple, troubling reality: waste burning is leaving a measurable mark on local air and people’s health.

This story is Part 1 of a two-part INQUIRER.net report on Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives’ (GAIA) Air Quality Monitoring (AQM) initiative, based on the recently released study “Clearing the Air: The Truth Behind Waste Incineration.”

Part 1 details the findings from the Philippines, Indonesia, and Nigeria; Part 2 will examine how communities are fighting back and the global forces driving waste incineration in the Global South.

The hidden threat: What’s really in the air

Most people in these communities know the scent of burning waste, the itch in their throats, the sting in their eyes. But what lingers is often invisible—fine particles called particulate matter (PM), especially PM2.5, which can slip deep into the lungs and even cross into the bloodstream.

Just how small are these particles? PM10, PM2.5, and PM1 are many times smaller than the thickness of a human hair, which is about 50 to 70 micrometers wide. These particles are so tiny that they can pass through our body’s natural defenses and reach even our internal organs.

As the international zero waste advocacy group GAIA—which wrote and published the study findings—explained:

“Because it is so small, particulate matter can easily permeate every organ in the body, with disastrous consequences on human health.”

 

And the consequences are not just distant possibilities; they play out in real lives, in both the long term and the short term. As GAIA warns in the study:

“Long-term exposures can cause respiratory and cardiovascular problems such as coughing, difficulty breathing, decreased lung function, chronic bronchitis, asthma, and premature death among people with heart or lung diseases. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable.”

But even short encounters with high levels of PM2.5 are risky:

“Short-term exposures to PM2.5 have been associated with premature death, acute bronchitis, asthma attacks, increased hospitalization, increased risk of low birth weight, and increased risk of lung cancer.”

READ: Waste-to-energy: The perils for human health, environment

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has set its “safe” limit for PM2.5 at just 15 micrograms per cubic meter, and only for a few days a year. But in Dumaguete, Surabaya, and Ogijo, ordinary days were anything but safe.

Dumaguete’s fight for clean air and survival

Dumaguete is famous for its prominent educational institutions and its breathtakingly beautiful waterfront, but for months, its headlines were made by something else: a pyrolysis-gasification plant with no known safeguards built right beside the city’s central waste facility.

READ: Study shows Dumaguete‘s famed waterfront extremely polluted

 

Most people didn’t even know it was operating until a plume of smoke was caught on video.

“Our concern was especially for the pollutants that you can’t see with the naked eye,” said Dr. Jorge Emmanuel, chief technical advisor for the project and adjunct professor at Silliman University.

He and other scientists, working with GAIA and War on Waste Negros, recruited 17 community volunteers—including mothers, store owners, and waste workers—to wear monitors during their daily routines.

The volunteers recorded PM2.5 levels as high as 106 micrograms per cubic meter—seven times the WHO’s safe limit. The results were not just troubling, they were relentless. During 27 days of air monitoring in Dumaguete, the air was dangerously polluted for 23 days, far above the safe limit set by the WHO.

To put that in perspective, the WHO states that communities should not experience more than four days of this kind of pollution in a whole year. In Dumaguete, people were exposed to unsafe air nearly every single day the monitors were worn—an 85 percent exceedance rate, and a level of risk far beyond what any community should face.

 

The study stressed that the health risks faced by residents went far beyond mere discomfort. According to the team’s health risk assessment, air pollution from the facility could cause up to 179 premature deaths each year if the plant continues to operate unchecked.

“[We] have been requesting the city and the government agencies involved for copies of the stock test emissions because we know of the many pollutants that come from these types of technologies,” Dr. Emmanuel said, referring to the pyrolysis-gasification machine.

“In one forum, we found out that no tests have been done, and at least to this date, no test results have ever been released,” he emphasized. Dr. Emmanuel added that even members of the research team and city councilors themselves were denied entry to the facility.

The monitoring sites included schools, homes, and small stores, making it clear: pollution here doesn’t respect property lines. It travels, settles, and clings to everyday life.

Pollution doesn’t respect boundaries

For Aloja Santos, one of the community volunteers in the air monitoring project, the real danger is both what you breathe and what you eat.

“Behind the central MRF (materials recovery facility), mountains of trash are dumped, and water filtering through the waste can become contaminated,” Santos explained.

“Nearby rivers connect to the ocean, where locals fish for their livelihood. That seafood eventually ends up on our plates. The question stands: Does this benefit us, or does this only pose danger to our health?”

Barangay Candau-ay resident Rochelle Gille Noala doesn’t mince words about what she sees every day.

“This is not an MRF, the reality is this is a dumpsite, that’s the truth. This causes a multitude of effects, especially on the health of our children. My children have been suffering from non-stop cough because of the pollution in the air here at the so-called MRF at Candau-ay, which is a blatant dumpsite,” Noala said.

Her worry only grows as the rainy season arrives: “What are we going to do when the calamities arrive, especially a flood? All the garbage from Candau-ay will come back to us, the people here in Dumaguete.”

But the risks aren’t limited to the air. The study found that inside the pyrolysis facility, plastic waste is melted without proper ventilation to protect workers from toxic fumes.

Even more concerning, the ash from the pyrolysis unit is reportedly mixed into cement hollow blocks, with no testing for dangerous substances such as dioxins, heavy metals, or other contaminants—nor any treatment to stabilize or neutralize what might be inside.

Surabaya: When every day is a bad air day

Across the sea in Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, volunteers faced a similar challenge near the Benowo Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Power Plant.

The plant is supposed to be a symbol of modern waste management, but for the people in Sumberejo Urban Village, it’s become a source of black smoke and bitter smells.

Al Tubongbanua, one of the technical leads, recounted how air quality monitors revealed “maximum daily average of PM2.5 concentration levels [reached as high as] 113 micrograms per cubic meter across all 14 monitors”—eight times the WHO standard.

During 31 days of monitoring, there wasn’t a single “good” air day.

Seven days out of 31, the air was rated “unhealthy for all” based on US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criteria; on the other days, it was still dangerous for children, elderly people, or anyone with asthma.

What made the situation even more alarming was the behavior of two types of pollution the study tracked: PM2.5 and PM10. PM10 refers to slightly larger particles—ten micrometers or less in diameter, still invisible to the naked eye, but big enough to cause health problems when breathed in.

While PM10 levels would suddenly spike when people walked past the incinerator—sometimes for just a few minutes or up to an hour—PM2.5 levels tended to stay high for much longer. Unlike PM10, which settles out of the air more quickly, PM2.5 can remain suspended and travel long distances, spreading pollution from the plant to residential areas, main roads, markets, and even schools nearby.

“The air pollution from these incinerators [is] not just a distant threat—they’re already affecting our health and daily lives,” states Wahyu Eka Setyawan of WALHI East Java, Indonesia.

“People are coughing, struggling to breathe, and living in fear of what they can’t see but can certainly feel,” Setyawan added.

For Setyawan and other local leaders, the greatest danger isn’t just the pollution, but the silence surrounding it.

“What’s worse, we’ve been kept in the dark. There’s no transparency, no real space for public participation in decisions that affect our future. This is not just unfair—it’s dangerous,” he said.

“We urgently call on governments to cancel these waste-to-energy projects and start listening to the people who are paying the price with their lungs.”

The community’s demand is simple but bold: shut the plant down, investigate the health impacts, and shift to solutions that don’t leave neighborhoods gasping for breath.

Ogijo: Breathing becomes a gamble

In Ogijo, Nigeria, the threat arrived in the form of a tire “recycling” facility. Officially, it’s a pyrolysis plant, but residents described open burning of tires, and clouds of smoke so thick that some mornings you can’t see past the market stalls.

For three women working at a nearby market, the decision to carry air monitors was about survival, not science.

Every day of the 23-day monitoring period, the PM2.5 levels exceeded the WHO’s guideline, sometimes reaching as high as 82 micrograms per cubic meter. “The smoke… It’s too much. They are polluting everywhere. We have been dealing with this for the past three years. It’s just too much,” one volunteer said.

The consequences are painfully real. Residents who applied for jobs or health certificates were sometimes told they had “failed” their medical exams because their lungs showed signs of heavy smoking—even if they had never touched a cigarette.

“A man told me that he took his daughter, a young daughter, to the hospital, and the doctor told him his daughter is a smoker,” shared Weyinmi Okotie, GAIA’s Clean Air Program Manager for Africa.

“Because [those people] live in Ogijo, everybody is tagged as smokers,” he added.

Okotie described the local frustration: “People of Ogijo still live in that community, drowning in air pollution.”

(Part 2: The next chapter: turning hard-won data into real change and accountability.)

 

(2025/07/16-10:21)

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