Hazardous wastes multimedia approach

Pohution prevention techniques must be evaluated through a thorough consideration of ah media, hence the term multimedia. This approach is a clear departure from previous pollution treatment or control techniques where it was acceptable to transfer a pollutant from one source to another in order to solve a waste problem. Such strategies merely provide short-term solutions to an ever increasing problem. As an example, air pollution control equipment prevents or reduces the discharge of waste into the air but at the same time can produce a solid (hazardous) waste problem. 

Carrying out research to facilitate multimedia, multispecies approaches to waste management. Acid rain and the leaching of hazardous chemicals from landfills demonstrate the mobility of chemicals from one medium (e.g., air, water, or soil) to another. 

Priority setting under RCRA is one mechanism for addressing multimedia pollutants such as lead and lead compounds in solid wastes, but the feasibility of that approach may be problematic, given the large listings of hazardous chemicals within all three bodies of legislation with potential multimedia dimensions RCRA, the CWA, and the SDWA. RCRA itself lists lead acetate, lead phosphate, lead subacetate, lead compounds not otherwise specified. 

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