Abstract: In 2016 the delivering quantity of municipal solid waste (MSW) was more than 2×10⁸ t, and the amount would increase in the future. Although the innocuity rate of municipal solid waste has had an obvious growth (over 10% per year) in China, with the deepening of the urbanization process, enormous quantity of MSW output has brought the great challenge for MSW system in China, and the emission of greenhouse gases and contaminants in the process of MSW disposal have been attracting more attention. For example, the emission of air contaminants NO_x, SO₂, CO and PM resulted from the waste incineration in 2010 were 28, 12, 062, 6, 500 and 4, 654 t, respectively. Plenty of researches about atmospheric emission from the whole process of MSW treatment and disposal has been done. We summarized the emission status in the processes of waste collection, transfer and final treatment, which is species diversity and emission dispersion, and analyzed the quantitative and qualitative research results of typical species of atmosphere emissions. Considering the limitation of the scope and species of existing research and in order to promote the process of systematizing and refining the atmospheric emission inventory and expand the coverage species of the atmospheric emission inventory, some suggestions are put forward:(1) Computer aided means and Geographic Information System could be adopted to the dynamic and fine management of transfer facilities in specific regions, account atmospheric environmental cost and its compression space during the waste transfer process. (2) The researches on the emission characteristic tests and the emission inventories of hazardous atmospheric pollutants (e. g., dioxins, toxic heavy metals and VOCs) released from the combustion of municipal solid waste should be perfected. (3) The spatial and temporal distribution characteristic of greenhouse gases emissions from MSW landfills should be completed and the atmospheric emission inventories of particulate matters and VOCs in landfills should be improved.