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Party relics in a park: nitrous oxide cartridges and balloons
Photo: Teresa Dapp / dpa
French garbage incinerators are currently grappling with a special kind of problem: Since laughing gas has been consumed more often at home at parties or due to pandemics, the corresponding garbage has been piling up.
As the newspaper »Le Parisien« reports, nitrous oxide containers such as cartridges or bottles are often carelessly disposed of in the household waste in France.
If they do not end up in the waste incineration plant completely empty, there will be explosions in the incinerator.
Expensive party fun
According to the operators, the ovens must then be shut down for repairs.
Stopping operations would cost 50,000 euros.
As a rule, the systems are therefore only taken out of service once a year for maintenance lasting several weeks.
Laughing gas has been abused as a party drug for years, the effect only lasts for a short time, but the health risks are enormous.
Chronic consumption can lead to nerve damage and degeneration of the spinal cord, neurologists warn.
Dangerous high
During the corona lockdown in particular, nitrous oxide consumption increased in France, the waste incinerators concluded from the accumulated problems with empty bottles in the incinerators during this time.
Dozens of bottles were also discovered in the mountains of rubbish.
Aside from the health risks, the waste incinerators appealed to dispose of the nitrous oxide containers appropriately.
ala / dpa