Medical Waste Site Sought
Maine’s hospitals dump more than 2 million pounds of medical waste such as used needles, blood-soaked surgical sponges, and intravenous tubes flows each year. Over the last several years, most of the waste has been routed to Rhode Island and Massachusetts to be incinerated and landfilled with household trash.
This issue has been given a serious thought by the hospital authorities and the environmentalists to seek a way out. The Maine Hospital Association is working with waste management companies to build a plant in central Maine that would process all of the state’s medical waste by the end of the year. So far, hospitals in Virginia are believed to be the only ones with stakes in a medical waste treatment facility.
Giant machines would sterilize the waste mostly linens and plastics with steam, then shred the residue into confetti-like bits for burial in specially licensed Maine landfills. Only 1 percent of the waste body parts and items used in chemotherapy, such as needles would still be shipped to out-of-state incinerators.
Environmentalists are delighted, since much of the waste, such as blood bags and patient identification bracelets, is made of polyvinyl chloride plastic, which when burned, can release harmful dioxins into the air that are blown back to Maine and wind up in the food chain.
Stericycle Inc., which monopolizes the medical waste disposal market in the state, and has raised rates without fear of competition. Jack May, the chief executive officer of Sebasticook Valley Hospital in Pittsfield, charged with overseeing the plant’s development for the hospital association, said that the management will be able to budget and know what our costs are going to be out into the future.
May projects his hospital will save over $5,000 a year, while larger hospitals could skim off about to $30,000, small drops in hospitals’ multi-million dollar operating budgets. May said that everything contributes in a climate of rising drug and other health-care costs.
Maine Medical Center in Portland said its relatively high volume of medical waste 430,000 pounds a year secures good disposal rates. Though it may not be economic but this helps all of the smaller hospitals get the critical mass of medical waste, makes the facility to be cost-effective adds Maine Med spokesman Wayne Clark.
The hospital association is considering sites in industrial parks in Newport and Pittsfield because of their central location and proximity to Interstate 95 and landfills in Norridgewock and Old Town. The association is hoped to pick a location by April 20. The new facility, projected to cost $500,000 to retrofit into an existing structure, provide up to 20 new middle-income jobs and produce little traffic, not more than two or three trucks a day.
The facility would be owned and operated by Syracuse, N.Y.-based SteriLogic Waste Systems Inc. Hydroclave Systems Corp. of Kingston, Ontario, would maintain the equipment, including two 6-foot-high autoclaves that will sterilize the medical waste with steam.
The hospital association would own the $1 million-plus equipment, and positions the group as majority owners of the facility. The association must seek a biomedical waste facility license and assurance must be provided meet safety regulations to the state Department of Environmental Protection. Environmentalist Mike Belliveau hopes sitting issues can be easily solved.
The idea to bring autoclaving to Maine emerged several years ago from a biomedical waste task force. Belliveau represented the Natural Resources Council of Maine in the group, which also included the hospital association and DEP.
In 2001, the groups reached a far-reaching pollution prevention agreement in which the hospitals assured to virtually eliminate the mercury found in their medical equipment and laboratories by 2005, steadily reduce the use of dioxin-producing plastics and reduce the volume of hospital waste by 50 percent by the year 2010. The association considered microwaving the waste before deciding on autoclaving as “the most economically feasible process, May said.
Hospitals in Virginia helped pave the way for this new technology. Since 1994, 60 members of the Virginia Hospital and Health Care Association have held stakes in a medical waste management company that uses autoclaving. The Richmond-based Virginia Health Care Waste Management Cooperative gives hospitals cost controls, returns any savings to shareholders and helped to decrease each member’s medical waste volume by 40 percent during their first year, said spokesman David Jenkins.
The project’s coordinator said that, the Maine initiative is to be a nonprofit venture but will also strive to reduce members’ waste streams, Instead of transporting waste in cardboard boxes, the facility would provide washable plastic tubs.
Chris Kerr, president of SteriLogic Waste Systems explained that, for the time being, the members have to buy the box, which is about 60 cents a box, and have to put a plastic liner in it. On top of that, you have to pay per pound to get rid of the box.
Charlotte Brody, executive director of Health Care Without Harm, an international organization, suggested that, given the state of the economy, hospitals need to be looking for opportunities where you can do well by doing good,” Brody said. “It just seems like (hospitals in Maine) are really trying to do it right.”
The project couldn’t be more straightforward to Joey Bard, the director of facilities at Northern Maine Medical Center in Fort Kent, which in 1992 became one of the last Maine hospitals to shut down an on-site incinerator due to stricter federal environmental regulations.