AMERICA HAS A HOT GARBAGE PROBLEM. LITERALLY. A THREAD
1/ Last year, I spotted some data on LinkedIn that caught my attention. Fires at recycling facilities were skyrocketing as more vape pens, smartphones and electric toothbrushes enter America’s blue bins
2/ I wondered what was happening in the final resting place for so much waste, landfills?
Turns out, a lot. Several have been overheating to 200F+ temperatures, leading to toxic gases, geysers of trash juice and sick neighbors who say they feel gaslit about what's going on
Jul 5, 2025 19:053/ For
@bloomberg.com,
@rachaeldottle.bsky.social and I dove into one dangerously hot landfill near LA that shows the problems that can arise as waste piles higher and deeper. “Garbage fire,” at the very least, is an apt metaphor for what we found. Gift link:
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick
Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.
4/ Chiquita Canyon Landfill is one of the country’s largest waste sites. In 2022, according to CalEPA, buried pockets of waste at the landfill started climbing to broiling temperatures well above safety standards
5/ Over the next three years, officials say, hot temperatures consumed about 90 acres of the landfill, which spewed out toxic gases including benzene and carbon monoxide. Residents of nearby Val Verde say they’re getting heart problems, nose bleeds, hand tremors and even cancer
6/ Regulators suspect that a flameless fire, or smolder, is burning below the surface of Chiquita Canyon due to the operator letting too much oxygen into the landfill – a problem that is known to start fires, which goes against federal regulations
7/ But the operator disputes the state’s findings and says nothing is on fire. The company calls Chiquita Canyon an "elevated temperature landfill," one of many ETLFs the US has seen in recent years
8/ Since 2006, landfills in Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Tennessee and beyond have undergone similarly noxious reactions, spurring debate about what exactly is driving them, what to call them and how to put them out
9/ Many residents say they feel gaslit when told they can’t trust their own senses. “The waste industry does not want to call it burning, even though it smells like burning,” one landfill neighbor in Virginia told me. “Even though you see smoke.”
10/ As America’s landfills grow and more flammable stuff enters the waste stream, several scientists told me they think the risk of fires and dangerously hot landfills is increasing.
Yet the waste industry has successfully pushed to roll back EPA rules designed to prevent fires
11/ Meanwhile the data for predicting these underground reactions – fires or otherwise – isn’t easy to track, leaving the millions who live near these waste sites in the dark about what’s happening there
12/ Advocates say there are simple fixes to improve safety. I hope you'll read:
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...America’s Overheated Landfills Have Been Making People Sick
Beneath layers of waste, landfills around the US have been reaching scorching temperatures, spewing toxic gases and geysers of trash juice.
