No projects being submitted by local bodies for burning biomedical waste from local hospitals are acceptable as incineration of hazardous toxic waste is highly harmful, warn Health Department officials here.
According to the officials, the local bodies should ensure that the projects for burning the biomedical waste complied with strict norms for their disposal. They had already raised objection to a proposal submitted by the Valapattanam panchayat for burning the biomedical and other waste from a health centre there.
District Medical Officer R. Ramesh raised the issue at the District Planning Committee meeting here on Tuesday. He told the meeting that any project that did not comply with government norms was not acceptable because of serious health hazards the indiscriminate burning of biomedical waste could cause.
Dr. Ramesh told The Hindu that the project proposed at Valapattanam was for burning the biomedical waste in a well-like covered hole. As per the government's stipulation, biomedical waste should be segregated into items for shredding or incinerating or putting into the autoclave.
Common facility
The DMO said the Indian Medical Association's system, IMAGE (IMA Goes Eco-friendly), was the only biomedical waste management system approved by the government. It was basically a common biomedical waste treatment and disposal facility in Palakkad which serves the hospitals in all the districts in the State. He said almost all the hospitals in the district had been affiliated to IMAGE which had a mechanism for collection of segregated waste from the affiliated hospitals for scientific disposal.
