Last April, police found blood-stained needles and infusion bags littering the grounds of an unlicensed recycling workshop in Yangliu village, Hunan province.
At least some of the 140 tons of improperly processed waste from different hospitals likely entered the consumer market, where it would have been used with food, home decorations and other products.
The hospital waste – which included infectious materials like urine and blood – was sold for RMB2,000 per ton to the village-based group, which targeted plastic materials. After processing, the plastics could be sold for RMB5,000 per ton on markets in Hebei province.
“They were not even wearing masks,” said Xu Shuli, chief of the Emergency Center of the Environmental Protection Agency. “This workshop polluted the environment… by directly draining the water used to wash the medical waste.”
On June 5, the Higher People's Court of Hunan province confirmed that more than 140 tons of medical waste had been processed in that workshop.
Twelve people from Hunan, Hubei, Henan, Jiangsu and other provinces were sentenced for environment pollution.
The plastics were being processed into acrylics and likely had already entered the market, according to an Outlook Weekly report.
The report describes a hospital waste disposal system in disarray, with an environmental department confirming that some hospitals failed to separate hazardous waste before entrusting it to profit-driven, cleaning companies.
Though supposed to be sorting the waste, some companies actively mixed hazardous and non-hazardous waste to increase weight.
Remote medical centers are technically required to deliver medical waste to city treatment centers, but dodge the rule by mixing it with household garbage before selling it to be processed, according Liu Shuai, a head of an environmental department in Hunan province.
Liu said punishment for breaking the disposal law is too weak, while small towns are not equipped to deal with hospital waste.
[Images via Sohu]
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