The negative influence of the great quantities of industrial waste disposed of in the environment and quality of life is particularly visible within areas of the highest hazard – especially Legnica, Katowice and Krakow voivodships. The rest of the country are also many local threats. Although official statistics estimate that the total amount of accumulated industrial wastes in Poland measures about 2.0 billion tonnes. Local estimates done with terrain surveys show that these are lowered figures.
Next to spectacular threats such as the Rudna factory in Legnica voivodship, where waste from the copper industry accumulated on an area of 1600 hectares, many threats that people are not aware of are dispersed throughout the whole country. These threats are places where waste accumulated for a long time. What they consist of and what transformations occurred within them no one knows.

As far as municipal waste landfills are concerned about 50% of the active facilities of this kind are located, prepared and utilized according to technical guidelines that are enforced. They do not pose a threat. Other facilities, which have been in use for many years, were established a long time ago without a detailed study of the hydrogeological conditions of the land beneath them. About 25% of landfills are not fenced or supervised. In these cases, there is a high risk that waste which should not be there at all, secretly found its way into these landfills.

In summary, apart from the well acknowledged hazards from "bulk" industrial waste there are also hazards resulting from:
– lack of a separate, autonomous system of gathering and neutralizing toxic wastes and other hazardous materials, that are produced by industry, agriculture and other branches of the economy;
– great lack of organization in disposing of and neutralizing contagious and post-operational waste produced in medical facilities;
– lack of information about the placement and quantity of waste accumulated in the country as well as the threat that they pose;
– lack of instrumental incentives for inhabitants to use existing municipal waste disposal systems and problems with the "permeability" of these systems.

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