Deccan Chronicle 12.02.2010

Hospital waste renders Kodungaiyur hazardous

Feb. 11: Hazardous waste from city hospitals including human body parts, used syringes and bloodied gauze are driven into the 750-acre dump yard at Kodangiyur every day in violation of rules.

Hospitals are required to safely dispose of hazardous wastes at a treatment plant outside the city. Biowaste from over 250 hospitals in Chennai is incinerated at the private facility near Singaperumal Koil, about 40 km from the city, but a senior official at the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board says that this was only a part of what is actually generated by the hospitals.

“There is no doubt that bio medical waste is dumped elsewhere,” he says. “Almost 40 per cent of the waste such as surgical masks and gloves, IV fluid bottles, and syringes are quietly diverted to the market by either the hospital or sanitation workers.”

Corporation workers too say that two trucks loaded with stinking bio-waste are brought every day from hospitals around North Chennai at the Kodangiyur landfill.

“The waste smells so bad that we do not weigh it like we do with every other corporation truck that comes to this dump,” said the worker who mans the weighbridge.

“The hospital waste goes directly into the landfill, and is buried in a pit under many layers of other garbage.” However, Ganga, a ragpicker who sells plastic and rubber collected from the trash, says she
has seen chunks of flesh and even dead babies lying among the mass of syringes, medicine bottles, and blood-soaked cotton. “They are scavenged by dogs and crows,” she adds.