'Blue Goose' lives on diet of dioxin.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced last week that it has developed a prototype mobile incinerator that can destroy dioxin.

"We are completely satisfied with the technology's performance," Bernard D. Goldstein, the agency's assistant administrator for research and development, announced at a news conference in Washington, D.C. Recent test results, he said, "represent a major breakthrough" in dealing with hazardous wastes.

In four trial burns conducted at a contaminated farm in southwest Missouri, the incinerator--nicknamed the "Blue Goose" -- destroyed 99.9999 percent of both liquid and solid wastes contaminated with 357 parts per million of 2,3,7,8-TCDD, the most toxic form of dioxin, agency officials said.

"The residues of dioxin left over in the ash were below the lowest amounts our analytical equipment can detect, which is two tenths of a part per billion," Frank Freestone, the EPA's project manager at the Missouri test site, said in a telephone interview this week.

Goldstein said that because the incinerator had burned the dioxin "so completely," the agency plans to designate the residues from future burns in the incinerator as "nonhazardous." The incinerator also meets federal air pollution standards, he said.

But the new technology, agency officials caution, may not be suitable for cleaning up all sites contaminated with dioxin. It costs from $200 to $1,200 for the Blue Goose to burn a ton of dioxin-contaminated soil, the agency said, and every ton takes an hour to burn. Thus, said Freestone, it would not make sense to use the small, mobile incinerator for a hazardous waste site like Times Beach, Mo., where 400,000 tons of soil are now contaminated (SN: 1/22/83, p. 60). "We're in the process of evaluating where we think it would be appropriate to use this type of mobile incinerator," Goldstein said.

Goldstein also said that the Blue Goose was only a model from which he hoped commercial waste disposal companies could learn. But some environmentalists have questioned whether the private sector can be trusted to do incineration. "Unfortunately in the waste business there seems to be a preponderance of dubious companies involved," said environmentalist Peter Montague, co-editor of the NEW JERSEY HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS. "It's a high consequence business, and I'm concerned that the EPA won't adequately monitor them," he said.