Though the medical community has every right to expect other industries to help reduce environmentally damaging waste, the medical industry itself needs to develop a worldwide plan for dealing with health-related waste products.

With a surprising level of regularity, medical waste is found on American beaches, and that is only the type of medical waste that is visible. People today are exposed to medical contaminants through many other sources. Medical material that goes into a landfill may result in contaminated drinking water. Those that are incinerated are released into the air. For instance, when anything containing chlorine is burned, it turns into a carcinogen. Anything with heavy metal content--lead, mercury, and cadmium--results in the spread of heavy metals in the environment. Radiation is widely used in various aspects of medicine, and disposal of this potentially very dangerous waste is handled in many different ways. In addition, pharmaceutical products, particularly antibiotics and cytotoxic drugs, can become part of a waste stream and add to the pollution in soil and water.

The risks involved in health care wastes have not been well studied, but it is estimated that approximately 20 percent of medical waste involves hazardous materials that may be infectious, toxic, or radioactive, according to information produced by WHO. Infectious waste (ranging from contaminated human waste to laboratory materials used on highly infectious individuals and anatomic animal or human parts) constitutes about 15 percent of hazardous waste, expired or contaminated pharmaceuticals and chemicals (solvents and disinfectants) make up about 3 percent of the hazardous materials, and the remainder consists of syringes and other sharp items, genotoxic waste--carcinogenic materials or certain drugs used in cancer treatment and radioactive matter--and waste with heavy metals such as mercury. . .

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