"terrorism of hospital waste on humankind' was how Justice N Venkatachala described the state of untreated infectious hospital waste in India at a workshop on "Hospital Waste Management: Law and Reality' organised by the Society for Environmental Laws and Management in New Delhi on September 6.
Delep Goswami of the Delhi-based Society for Development of Environmental Laws and Management said that there was no place for dumping the 20 tonnes of incinerated infectious medical wastes that Delhi generates everyday. B Sengupta, member secretary, Central Pollution Control Board ( cpcb), said that the overall scenario remained far from satisfactory: thermocouples (temperature measuring devices) were non-functional in most incinerators; most hospitals are still incinerating plastic disposable/bottle wastes and the incinerators were operated by unskilled operators. Sengupta said that emission monitoring conducted by the cpcb at seven hospitals during March-April 1999 revealed that "the particulate matters emitted are 40-50 times higher than the permissible limit in all the hospitals.'
The workshop was attended by lawyers, doctors, engineers, representatives from both the Delhi and Central pollution control boards and non-governmental organisations ( ngo s). Speaking on the occasion, Dilip Biswas, Chairperson, cpcb, expressed the need for training the medical staff on how to deal with this problem.
Links:
[1] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/news/treating-waste
[2] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/newspaper/down-earth
[3] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/hospital-waste
[4] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/waste-disposal
[5] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/waste-incineration
[6] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/waste-treatment
[7] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/government-india-goi
[8] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/delhi