Impacts of human activities on dioxins emissions at national scale

In this study, the dioxins emissions from 51 countries were investigated by multivariate statistical analysis, and the correlations between dioxins emissions and some aspects of human activities were discussed at national scale. For the 51 countries mentioned in this paper, the total emissions are 36.0 kg-TEQ yr(-1), and the average values of annual dioxins emissions (from 2000 to 2007) per capita and per unit GDP are calculated to be 18.3g-TEQ million-people(-1)yr(-1) and 6.7 g-TEQ billion-USD(-1) yr(-1), respectively. Furthermore, as the three leading industrial emission sources of dioxins, power generation and heating, ferrous and non-ferrous metal production and waste incineration contribute 45.1% to the total emission in all. It is also worthy to note that the uncontrolled combustion processes release about 40% of the total emission. From the correlations between the dioxins emissions and the factors of human activities, population and land area could be tentatively suggested to be positive indicators to dioxins emissions. Specially, GDP per capita would roughly be a negative indicator to the emissions from the uncontrolled combustion processes, and GDP would roughly be a positive indicator to emissions from the other sources.