Medical Waste

Timothy B. McCall, M.D.

Hospitals don’t like to admit they may be harming the public’s health. But there’s no denying that most of them have a toxic waste problem, so much so that the American Hospital Association and the Environmental Protection Agency just inked a deal that promises to help hospitals cut medical waste in half. Marketplace commentator, Dr. Timothy McCall says the agreement, while notable, still allows hospitals to pollute.

Much of the toxic waste problem at hospitals dates back to the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic was first coming to light. Hospitals began to incinerate practically all their garbage because they were concerned about spreading infections. Today many hospital continue to burn waste. And not just syringes and soiled bandages, but paper, packaging material, thermometers, and IV bags. It all gets stuffed into bright red medical waste bags and torched. Yet according to the CDC only 2 percent of medical waste requires incineration.

Why should we care? Well, when burned IV bags and other products made out of the chlorine-containing plastics known as PVCs form dioxin—one of the most potent carcinogens ever discovered. The dioxin goes up the smokestack, lands on distant soil, making its way into everything from groundwater to dairy products to baby food--and eventually, of course, into all of us. And then there’s mercury. A 1997 EPA report estimated that 10 percent of the mercury in fish—the major source of human exposure--comes from incinerated medical waste.

Recently the American Hospital Association and the EPA announced a voluntary plan to help hospitals cut their waste in half by the year 2010. It’s an important first step because at least the AHA is admitting there’s a problem—which they’ve been reluctant to do up till now. And to their credit, the plan calls for the elimination of mercury-containing waste, a particular threat to children and pregnant women.

But there are big problems with the clean-up plan. It doesn’t promise to cut incineration and never mentions dioxin—the result of burning plastics like IV bags. The amazing thing is that there’s a good alternative. Non-PVC containing IV bags are on the market right not and they actually costs less. We don’t need a voluntary program with a 12-year time line to cut this major contributor to dioxin pollution. Hospitals could take this step toda