The Lebanese government may have adopted a waste management plan in March 2016 that put an end to the most visible aspects of the 2015 garbage crisis, but decades of waste mismanagement have dangerous and long-term implications for public health.

Mousa, a 35-year-old gardener, lives close to a dump in Chehabiyeh in south Lebanon. “They burn at least three truckloads of trash a day: nylon, plastic, household waste, everything,” he told Al-Monitor. “My 4-year-old daughter has [allergic reactions] all over her body, but we can’t relocate. We have no money and no support from the government.”

Mousa is one of the 53 residents that Human Rights Watch (HRW) interviewed while preparing a report published Dec. 1 on the health risks caused by trash burning in Lebanon, titled “As If You’re Inhaling Your Death.”

“The garbage crisis gained prominence in 2015, but open burning has been ongoing for decades in more than 150 dumps across the country, and it poses a health risk to people living nearby,” said Bassam Khawaja, a Lebanon and Kuwait researcher at HRW, during a press conference presenting the report on Dec. 1 in Beirut. According to the World Health Organization, the air pollution in Beirut is three times over “the safe level,” and there are nearly 1,500 deaths by air pollution every year in Lebanon.