Interesting and well-balanced piece in Waste Management World about the production of dioxins during the incineration of clinical wastes.

Claiming support from statements made by the World Health Organisation, the piece is actually a report of the views of Health Care Without Harm. Described as a non-profit organisation – more accurately an environmental pressure group with a long history of solidly one-sided presentation of scientific issues to support their own ideology – HCWH has a track record of resisting incineration, just because, well, just because its incineration. That does not fit with their view that incineration is bad, always bad, and that other alternate waste management processes must be developed.

More realistically, it is inevitable to consider that incineration is with us now and will stay with us. It is a useful, often essential, process that in its many variations can provide the best solution to a range of disposal needs. But we do need better incineration processes. We need to consider which wastes go to incineration and which do not. We need to consider which incineration processes are an act of the devil, as HCWH would have us believe, and which such as EFW are to be tolerated, even applauded as long as they are not called incinerators!

Dioxin production from clinical waste incineration is a real problem. It is a problem that cannot properly be solved simply by saying don’t use this or that product in the hospital, or shut down the incinerators, but to ensure that the design and operation of existing and future incinerators meet or exceed the tightest emission control limits.