Incinerated hospital wastes free from dioxins, says ENV
Reports By Dominic Nathan
One million litres of hazardous hospital wastes are incinerated here every month but this does not produce the potentially toxic chemicals known as dioxins, said the Environment Ministry.
The ministry’s spokesman was responding to queries from The Straits Times after reports that the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States was planning to control such incineration, which it believes to be one of the largest sources of dioxins.
Dioxins are chemicals released when wastes are incinerated. They are linked to cancer and other health problems. In Singapore, about one million litres of hazardous wastes, such as blood-stained dressings, syringes and toxic drugs, are incinerated every month at two approved private incinerators.
This is up from the total of 864,000 litres a month in 1993.
The ENV spokesman said that the use of hospital waste incinerators to sterilize and dispose hospital wastes is an internationally accepted practice, used in many developed countries.
He said: "International studies into the effects of dioxins on health are still on going. Dioxins are suspected but not proven human carcinogens." However, as a precaution, ENV banned two types of chemicals in 1989 from being incinerated as these would limit dioxins when burned.
He added: "ENV has tested of these hospital waste incinerators and has so far not detected dioxins in the ash collected from the incinerators." In a paper presented recently on the management of hospital wastes here, Mr Koh Teck Tong from ENV’s Pollution Control Department said that the current hospital waste management measures were instituted after a review on 1988.
He said: "Following press reports from overseas counties on drug addicts rummaging through garbage bins ear hospitals to scavenge for used syringes for their own use, there was growing concern for the safe disposal of waste generated by hospitals."
Source : The Straits Times, January 3 1995
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