Incineration of municipal solid wastes (MSW) is the main method of waste management in Taiwan. Although the incineration of MSW processes the solid wastes at 850-950 degrees C and destroys most of the organics, the content of incineration ashes is still a problem for landfill. Moreover, acid precipitation is much worse than before in Taiwan, especially in the northern areas. For instance, the occurrence probabilities of acid precipitation measured from 1991 to 1998 in Taipei increase from 73% to 85%. Therefore, it is more important to get a series of data that will help explore the influence of acid precipitation during disposal on characterization of pollutants than to analyze the ash properties after the incinerators have been constructed and regularly used. In this investigation, the disposal site of incineration ashes is simulated in laboratory by test columns. An irrigation experiment is taken to simulate the acid precipitation at room temperature. In order to explore the exact influence on leachate quality of the main chemical composition of acid precipitation, columns are migrated with different concentrations of sulfate in acid precipitation. This investigation showed that the sulfate concentration of acid precipitation has an increasing effect on the accumulative release of heavy metals, such as Zn, Pb and Cu, from leachate. The sulfate concentration of acid precipitation, however, will not influence the trend of chemical oxygen demand (COD), biochemical oxygen demand (BOD5) and total organic carbon (TOC) in the leachate release. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.