SteriHealth has contacted Inside Waste arguing there were factual inaccuracies in our recent article, Medical waste still a bloody mess. In particular, for “commercial reasons”, residuals from its chemical treatment plant have not been disposed in SITA’s Taylors Rd landfill since August 2009, well before SA medical waste contracts changed hands and SITA decided to ban receipt of certain wastes due to safety concerns.

Inside Waste has confirmed with SITA Environmental Solutions that the residual wastes in question have not been disposed in its landfill since last year. Victorian manager Daniel Fyfe points out his ban on the future receipt of such material remains in place, subject to the conditions outlined in the article published in Inside Waste Weekly on April 13.

However, Inside Waste agrees the tenor of the article would have been different if this information had been available before publication and, in the interests of keeping the industry fully informed, is making SteriHealth’s full response to our article available to all readers – download the letter here.

The letter, which is signed by MD Dan Daniels, argues the recent article makes a number of other “spurious” claims. In particular, he said “the article incorrectly states that alternate treatment technologies such as chemical destruction or autoclave are inferior to incineration”.

Inside Waste rejects this assertion. Our point has consistently been that, according to guidelines from various EPAs and health departments, incineration is the only method suitable for disposing all medical and related wastes. Chemical treatment is, according to regulators including the Victorian EPA, suitable for treating some material, but only when it is not “contaminated by human tissue waste or pharmaceuticals”.

We would like to again direct readers to the Medical waste a bloody mess article, published in the October 2009 issue of WME Magazine, for a detailed explanation of widespread industry concerns relating to the medical waste market, which we continue to stand behind.

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