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June 12 , 2000 Poverty in America: Turning
the Tables Allied
Forces Poverty
in a Gilded Age Out
of Sight Leave
the Kids Alone The
Union Difference Down
and Out on Polk Street Other Features: Star
Wars: Episode Two "This
Is Not Life. This Is Prison" Bosnian
Serbs Still Look to Belgrade Editorial Appall-O-Meter Marching
On The
Other Side of the Street Going
to Waste Profile
Forgotten
America Ancient
Daze A
Class by Itself A
Different Point of View |
Going to Waste
Health
Care Without Harm cleans up toxic hospitals
By Eric Weltman
Boston
First,
do no harm," the physician's credo, is being violated by the nation's
hospitals, which rank among the leading sources of dioxin and mercury
pollution. The culprits: incinerators that burn infectious waste laden
with mercury and plastic medical devices.
In 1994, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that medical waste incinerators were the leading source of dioxin, a toxin linked to a spectrum of health effects, including cancer, reproductive disorders and immune system dysfunction. The EPA also estimated that medical waste incinerators are the No. 4 source of mercury, a potent neurotoxin. Both toxins share the nefarious distinction of traveling up the food chain, with dioxin concentrating in meat and dairy products and mercury building up in fish.
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City
Medical Waste incinerator in Hamtramck, Michigan processes waste
from a number of hospitals.
Credit: Tracey Easthope |
The irony of hospitals being major polluters was not lost on environmentalists
who launched the Health Care Without Harm Campaign (HCWH) in 1996 to promote
a green transformation of the industry. Today, HCWH's members include
more than 250 environmental, public health and labor organizations, such
as Greenpeace, the Breast Cancer Fund and the American Nurses Association.
The coalition also includes some hospitals, such as Boston's New England
Medical Center and New York's Beth Israel, as well as two Catholic health
care systems.
Still, HCWH has faced industry resistance not unlike that presented by
more typical environmental targets. According to HCWH's Gary Cohen, the
American Hospital Association (AHA) initially responded that pollution
isn't a major concern of the organization. "Hospitals are under a lot
of competing pressures, including managed care and loss of federal funding,"
Cohen says. "So environmental issues are not on top of the list."
Part of HCWH's campaign has been touting the fiscal benefits of waste
prevention and recycling. Hospitals generate about 2 million tons of waste
per year. A portion of that winds up in red bags reserved for infectious
materials. However, sloppy waste management results in pizza boxes, newspapers
and other ordinary waste often being redbagged in some hospitals. Redbagging
costs five times more than ordinary trash disposal. Yet Beth Israel saves
almost $1 million a year by reducing the amount of trash it redbags and
through increased recycling. Another hospital, Fletcher Allen in Burlington,
Vermont, has won acclaim for its recycling program, which includes composting
its food waste at a local organic farm.
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In These Times ©
2000
Vol. 24, No. 14 |