‘An onerous Austrian legacy’
Posted by: Alecks P. Pabico | August 4, 2007 at 11:34 am
Filed under: Image Galleries, In the News, Public Health
All that remains now of the Hoval incinerator at the Davao Regional Hospital in Tagum City, Davao del Norte is its fuel storage tank.
The incinerator at the Dr. Paulino J. Garcia Memorial Hospital, which registered extremely high levels of dioxin/furan emissions during a DOH-commissioned test, was last used in 2002.
Before its decommissioning, the incinerator at the Bicol Regional Training and Teaching Hospital in Daraga, Albay was found to have a defective start-up burner.
The decommissioned incinerator at the Baguio General Hospital.
The decommissioned incinerator at the Bicol Regional Hospital in Naga City.
The decommissioned incinerator at the Batangas Regional Hospital in Batangas City.
The decommissioned incinerator at the Jose B. Lingad Memorial General Hospital in San Fernando, Pampanga.
Its stack flaring up and emitting black smoke, the incinerator at the Davao Medical Center in Davao City had to be shut down because of complaints from the nearby community.
The decommissioned incinerator at the Ilocos Training and Regional Medical Center (formerly Ilocos Regional Hospital) in San Fernando, La Union.
The fuel storage tank of the decommissioned incinerator at the East Avenue Medical Center in Quezon City.
The stack of the East Avenue Medical Center's incinerator barely rises above nearby structures.
The decommissioned incinerator at the Philippine Orthopedic Hospital in Quezon City.
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IN 1995, the Department of Health, through a P504-million loan extended by Bank Austria, acquired 26 incinerators to help improve the management of medical waste in its controlled hospitals in the country.
The medical waste incinerators, touted as “state-of-the-art” technology, were manufactured by Liechtenstein-based Hoval and were supplied by an Austrian company, Vamed Engineering, whose track record in providing the safest and comparatively cheaper solutions to hospital sanitation the Austrian government even vouched for.
But what the country got, based on investigations done by Greenpeace and Ecowaste Coalition, findings of which were also confirmed by government-commissioned emission tests, were incineration facilities designed using outdated 1950s controlled-air type technology. The design, which consisted mainly of a primary chamber where medical waste is burned under starved-air conditions, has been rendered ineffective by the varied materials, including plastics of different kinds, that consist today’s medical waste. The Hoval incinerators also did not come with required air pollution control devices to minimize pollutant emissions.
All 26 incinerators were further made obsolete by the enforcement of the incineration ban of the Clean Air Act and now lie idle, gathering rust in the recipient hospitals. Some have been cannibalized for their serviceable parts even as the government continues to pay for the loan at about P90 million each year until 2014.
Above photos show some of the decommissioned incinerators, courtesy of EcoWaste.
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