Love it or loathe it? PVC in hospitals

Love it or loathe it? PVC cannot be eliminated from hospitals, for flooring or for the manufacture of IV bags and tubing where crystal clarity and high flexibility are essential.

Some work toward the capture and elimination of PVC from hospitals though alternate manufacture and procurement, others accept its presence but work hard to capture all PVC waste for reprocessing, eliminating this problem chlorinated waste from incinerators or landfill.

This sits perhaps uncomfortably against news that The Southern African Vinyls Association (Sava) was officially welcomed this month as a member of the newly formed PVCMedAlliance, a Brussels-based international polyvinyl chloride (PVC) industry platform launched in October 2012 to raise awareness of and promote informed decisions about the use of PVC in the healthcare industry.

So love it or loathe it we probably all know that PVC is irreplaceable in clinical practice and will always be present in clinical wastes, unless captured as a source-segregated separate fraction. And it seems there is some weighty lobbying to make sure PVC is widely used, despite calls from the other end of the pipe to eliminate or at least reduce PVC use to limit its adverse environmental impact.

 

 

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