Open burning of household waste: Effect of experimental condition on combustion quality and emission of PCDD, PCDF and PCB.

Open burning for waste disposal is, in many countries, the dominant source of polychlorinated dibenzodioxins, dibenzofurans and biphenyls (PCDD/PCDF/PCB) release to the environment. To generate emission factors for open burning, experimental pile burns of about 100 kg of household waste were conducted with emissions sampling. From these experiments and others conducted by the same authors it is found that less compaction of waste or active mixing during the fire--"stirring"--promotes better combustion (as evidenced by lower CO/CO(2) ratio) and reduces emissions of PCDD/PCDF/PCB; an intuitive but previously undemonstrated result.

Surgical removal of epidural and intradural polymethylmethacrylate extravasation complicating percutaneous vertebroplasty for an osteoporotic lumbar compression fracture. Case report.

The authors report the case of patient with a lumbar vertebral body osteoporotic compression fracture who underwent percutaneous transpedicular polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)-assisted vertebroplasty in whom extravasation of the cement into the spinal canal caused immediate neurological deterioration. Lateral lumbar radiography and computerized tomography scanning demonstrated the presence of intraspinal PMMA. The patient suffered severe low-back pain, left-sided sciatica, and profound left L2-4 distribution weakness and numbness.

Traumatic thoracic spinal fracture dislocation with minimal or no cord injury. Report of four cases and review of the literature.

Object: Thoracic fracture dislocations reportedly lead to complete paraplegia in 80% of cases. It is rare for these dislocations not to cause neurological deficits, as evidenced by the mere 11 well-documented neurologically intact cases in the English-language literature.

Methods: The authors report four cases of thoracic fracture dislocation that remained neurologically intact and discuss 11 other previously published well-documented cases.