Tuesday, 25 November 2003
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POST 00617E : DESTRUCTION OF VACCINES Follow-up on Posts 00603E, 00606E, 00609E, 00611E and 00614E 25 November 2003 __________________________ Henrik Oja (mailto:[log in to unmask]) shares his experience on incineration following questions raised in the previous posting on the subject (Post 00614E). This interesting contribution highlights the need for a clear and detailed policy on this issue and for filling gaps recognized in Post 00606E by Yves Chartier and Ümit Kartoglu among others. __________________________ Regarding glass in incineration: Glass indeed does not burn. We have been doing controlled lab testing of our incinerator using hospital waste for a year, and glass is always a problem. If you have a system that is fired with external fuel (such as ours which uses liquid gas to reach the EU emissions specs) any glass will result in very high localised temperature around the melted glass. If the total amount of glass is not too high and the design of the system is good, you can just remove the glass in conjunction with ash removal / maintenance activities. Any glass may also result in poor final burning, as some of the material may "cling" to the lump of glass and not end up as nice fine ash. Particularly safety box cardboard can behave like this. Glass in the ashes is always a safety risk for the operator. It may have huge amounts of needles encased in the lump. It can also throw off shards of glass as you remove it, because of stress created by uneven cooling. This can occur even 24 hrs after burning. If there is very much glass you may have problems with metal fatigue from the high temperature and/or clogging or other problems in your grid system if your incinerator has one. Explosions can be an issue and most definitely will result in emissions bursts as the system gets unbalanced for a while. The behaviour of a small ampoule at least in our experience is that the aluminium cap will melt and seal the ampoule first, which of course will subsequently result in a minor explosion after heating up sufficiently. Our recommendation is definitely to do good segregation, and this cannot be accomplished if you do not have the glass container right next to the safety box. Since any waste management system will only be as good as the practises and procedures that support it, this is just one item on the list of things that need to work. Henrik Oja/Mediburner ______________________________________________________________________________ Visit the TECHNET21 Website at http://www.technet21.org You will find instructions to subscribe, a direct access to archives, links to reference documents and other features. ______________________________________________________________________________ To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to : mailto:[log in to unmask] Leave the subject area BLANK In the message body, write unsubscribe TECHNET21E ______________________________________________________________________________ The World Health Organization and UNICEF support TechNet21. The TechNet21 e-Forum is a communication/information tool for generation of ideas on how to improve immunization services. It is moderated by Claude Letarte and is hosted in cooperation with the Centre de coopération internationale en santé et développement, Québec, Canada (http://www.ccisd.org) ______________________________________________________________________________
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