Manila — Environmentalists and healthcare advocates today called on the Department of Health to remove the inclusion of pyrolysis and/or burning in its revised Health Care Waste Management (HCWM) Manual as an option for dealing with medical wastes, stressing that the said provision violates the spirit and intent of the Clean Air Act of 1999.
“We do not want to mislead healthcare workers and the public into thinking that pyrolysis is a clean technology that can be used to manage medical waste,” said Merci Ferrer, Director of Health Care Without Harm-Southeast Asia (HCWH-SEA). The Manual serves as a bible to all hospitals when it comes to managing wastes coming from hospitals or other health care facilities.
“The claim that pyrolysis is smokeless or that it has zero-emission has been proven to be a myth,” said Ferrer citing the Philippine experience in 1997 when the government contracted 26 medical waste incinerators from Austria believed to be state-of-the-art but ended up having toxic emissions way higher than standards in US, Europe and even Philippines own Clean Air Act (CAA). Although the incinerators are no longer being used, the Php503 million loan for the facility is still being paid by taxpayers until 2014, causing close to US$2 million dent to the national coffers.
“So we reiterate our call, walang usok kung walang sunog (no emission if there is no burning) and call on the DOH to scrap pyrolysis or any other forms of burning in the revised HCWM Manual,” said Ferrer.
According to Ruth Stringer, HCWH International Science and Policy Coordinator, pyrolysis, along with gasification and plasma are technologies classified as incinerators by the European Union (EU). She added that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has declared dioxin, an inevitable byproduct of incineration, as a known human carcinogen.
“While other countries are moving towards technologies that will safely treat infectious hospital wastes without detrimental effect to people and the environment, the Philippines is retreating back to a technology that has been proven to be unsafe.
“We question the wisdom behind this when the Philippines has very good waste management practices that should be modeled and replicated around the world,” Stringer added referring to recent visits to Perpetual Succor Hospital in Cebu City where a bio digester, an anaerobic digestion process used to treat biodegradable waste without oxygen and that produced gas without burning, is currently being tested and St Paul Hospital Tuguegarao, which is autoclaving its infectious waste onsite.
Upholding the Clean Air Act
“The ban on incineration enshrined in the CAA was intended to cover the disposal of medical waste. Burning infectious medical waste transforms a biological problem into a daunting toxics pollution problem. The solution lies, not in circumventing the ban through the use of verbal or technical subterfuge, but in the proper application of available disinfecting treatment and disposal options which do not create pollution ,” said Von Hernandez, Executive Director of Greenpeace-Southeast Asia and President of the Ecowaste Coalition.
“Re-introducing burn technologies via pyrolysis or waste-to-energy (WTE) proposals across the nation is part of the continuing attempt by incinerator pushers, abetted by their allies in government, to erode and weaken the real intent of the Clean Air Act,” he added.
Another item in question in the Manual is the replacement of ‘reduce’ in the 3Rs of waste management with ‘recover’. The group fears that this will open the door to waste-to-energy technologies in hospitals that will promote non-segregation of waste and instead push for burning of all wastes—infectious or not—for fuel recovery.
Lawyer Gloria Estenzo Ramos of the Philippine Earth Justice Center pointed out that such a move is blatantly going against the principles and provisions of the Clean Air Act and the Ecological Solid Waste Management Law.
“What happened to the State’s duty to protect and advance the right of the people to a balanced and healthful ecology, and to promote and protect the global environment to attain sustainable development?” questioned Ramos. “How about the recognition that a clean and healthy environment is for the good of all and should therefore be the concern of all, including our implementors and enforcers? What about the ‘polluters must pay’ and ‘precautionary’ principles? How can these be attained and promoted when the State thru the Department of Health is bent on legalizing pollution via inclusion of pyrolysis in the Manual?”
“Reintroducing the use of pyrolysis/burning is synonymous with trashing our right to life, health, safe and healthy working conditions and right to an adequate standard of living,” said Ramos.
Doctors’ prescription: BURN NOT
“As a medical doctor, I am aware of the wastes coming out of hospitals,” said Dr. Gina Nazareth of the Philippine College of Physicians, the umbrella organization of internists in the Philippines with 7,660 members. “Where these wastes go, some may say, is beyond the doctors’ radar. But as someone who took the oath to, first, do no harm, I take it as part of our responsibility to make sure that medical wastes are not mishandled and worst, made into potential sources of toxic pollution, illnesses and diseases.”
Nazareth is among the signatories of the position paper that HCWH-SEA is forwarding to DOH Secretary Enrique T. Ona along with Ecowaste Coalition, Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, Greenpeace-Southeast Asia, Philippine Earth Justice Center and Mother Earth Foundation.
“It is time for the DOH and doctors alike to stand by its name,” said Nazareth. “Health provision is what we are here for. That is what we should do.”