The Hindu : New Delhi News : Court seeks report on `polluting' incinerators

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Apr 22, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Court seeks report on `polluting' incinerators

By Our Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI, APRIL 21. Taking a suo motu note of a news report published under the headline "Hospital incinerators the biggest polluters'' in the April 21 edition of The Hindu, the Delhi High Court today directed the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC) to check the veracity of the news story and submit a report to it on May 5.

A Division Bench comprising Justice B.C. Patel and Justice B.D. issued the direction after going through the report.

Quoting a study by Toxics Link, a voluntary body, titled `Incinerators in Delhi— State the Biggest Polluter', the report said that it was shocking to note that governmental hospitals continued to threaten the health of the city's population by releasing carcinogens by burning medical wastes.

Burning of wastes of any kind emitted Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPS) like dioxins and furans. Dioxin exposure was linked to a variety of health problems such as impairment of the nervous system, the endocrine system, and the reproductive system. Medical waste incineration, too, had been linked with the release of these deadly carcinogens, the report said.

The report further said that the Central Pollution Control Board had recently issued guidelines on Common Bio-Medical Waste Treatment Facility and on the Design and Construction of Bio-Medical Waste Incinerators, which discouraged on-site incinerators by allowing new incinerators only in certain inevitable situations, and also limited the category of wastes that required incineration as the treatment option.

"But all this seems to be happening only on paper. In practice, hospitals have not been notified (through an amendment in the rules) about the limits of incineration and they continue to incinerate all categories of waste proposed in the rules. State Pollution Control Boards continue giving statements instigating hospitals to go in for on-site incineration and some state governments are also looking for installing unapproved technologies like Plasma Pyrolysis,'' the report said quoting the study.

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