The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Biomedical waste being disposed of casually

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jun 10, 2004

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Biomedical waste being disposed of casually

By Karthik Subramanian and Ramya Kannan

CHENNAI, JUNE 9. The practice of dumping of biomedical waste, including body parts, along with municipal waste is not restricted to the Government Royapettah Hospital here.

A day after an incident of a portion of a severed limb reaching a Chennai Corporation garbage lorry was reported in these columns, there is information from the three other government hospitals in the city, acknowledging that biomedical waste was indeed being `disposed of casually.' A section of the Corporation's sanitary workers said it had been collecting biomedical waste daily from various other city government hospitals as well.

The workers said separate lorries were earmarked for collection of biomedical waste from government hospitals as well as Corporation health centres. This garbage, untreated as per specifications, is being dumped along with other municipal wastes on the Corporation yard at Kodungaiyur.

This is a blatant violation of the Biomedical (Management and Handling) Rules 1998, which specify that human anatomical waste (including organs, tissues and body parts) be incinerated or buried in deep pits, experts point out.

When contacted, government hospital authorities said each hospital had a `foolproof' method of disposing of wastes. A senior official in Government General Hospital said the wastes generated there were being buried in a deep pit on the campus or destroyed in the in-house incinerator.

However, contradicting this claim, doctors in the hospital said though there was an incinerator on the premises, it could not be used, as it did not match Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board (TNPCB) specifications. A senior official of the board confirmed that the hospitals which had incinerators were asked to stop using the facility last year.

"Human parts and placenta are still being dumped in dustbins in government hospitals. More common is the sight of needles and syringes being disposed of similarly. It is hazardous and also aids in transmission of viruses and infection to those who handle such wastes," a doctor said, on condition of anonymity.

A Corporation official said the responsibility of clearing biomedical waste lay with the hospitals. Asking sanitary workers to clear it amounted to endangering their lives.

Rajesh Rangarajan of Toxics Link, which has worked extensively in hospital waste management, said, "When we decided to review the implementation of rules in Chennai, we found that the situation was so bad that if we stuck to the rules, we would have to close down every health set-up in the city."

However, he said, since the State-level advisory committee on Hospital Waste Management was constituted, the situation had improved. While crediting the TNPCB with setting high standards for waste disposal within the State, Toxics Link believes that proper implementation would have to be ensured in hospitals.

At least a section of the private health sector seems to have taken better care of handling biomedical wastes.

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