NBC Nightly News - 1993-05-18
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Read a transcript preview of “NBC Nightly News - 1993-05-18” from malgent, uploaded on 2026-01-05.
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Language: English (original, YouTube automatic captions)
[0:00] redesigned to give you the career
[0:02] >> And on America Close-Up, if you smoke
[0:05] and get divorced, could you lose the
[0:06] kids?
[0:09] >> This is NBC Nightly News with [music]
[0:12] Tom Brokaw.
[0:14] >> Good evening. America is a great machine
[0:16] when it comes to producing hazardous
[0:18] waste, the poisonous byproducts of a
[0:20] great industrial society.
[0:22] And dealing with that waste is rapidly
[0:24] reaching crisis proportions. Today, the
[0:26] Environmental Protection Agency cracked
[0:28] down hard on incinerators that burn the
[0:30] waste, ruling they're a hazard.
[0:33] It's a ruling that affects every part of
[0:34] the country, and NBC's Robert Hager has
[0:36] more tonight.
[0:39] >> Incineration, once seen as an answer to
[0:41] waste problems, now it seems burning
[0:43] also pollutes. Today, EPA announced a
[0:46] virtual 18-month moratorium on any new
[0:49] hazardous waste incinerators, a threat
[0:52] some existing facilities could be shut
[0:53] down, a promise to overhaul regulations,
[0:57] and an effort to get industry to
[0:58] voluntarily reduce waste. EPA's Carol
[1:01] Browner.
[1:01] >> We are using every tool we have
[1:03] available to us to, I think, fairly
[1:06] radically change the process by which we
[1:09] have dealt with hazardous waste
[1:11] incineration in this country.
[1:13] >> Today's program does not affect garbage
[1:15] burned in municipal incinerators. At
[1:17] issue are toxic liquids and sludges from
[1:19] oil refineries, from the manufacture of
[1:21] fertilizers and pesticides, and from
[1:23] chemical plants. Historically, these
[1:25] were left in dumps, but when authorities
[1:27] barred that in the '80s, use of
[1:29] incinerators grew tremendously.
[1:32] This map locates the 20 large