Plastic2Oil Inc (PTOI)

[dipinvester]

Hospitals and clinics in the United States generate 600,000 to one million tons of waste each year, and as much as 15 percent of it poses a potential infection hazard, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. For many years, most hospitals either incinerated contaminated syringes, needles, paper, plastic, glass, fabric, and human tissues on-site, or sent them to incinerators off their grounds to ensure that all pathogens were destroyed.

Regulations for medical waste incinerator emissions that were required by the Clean Air Act of 1990—but passed only three years ago—have changed the economics of this practice. U.S. hospitals must now retrofit their incinerators with costly scrubbers that remove or neutralize dioxins, furans, hydrogen chloride, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and the heavy metals lead, cadmium, and mercury to meet those regulations.

Many hospitals and medical centers have found it more economical to replace their on-site incinerators with alternative waste treatment technologies, primarily microwave systems or steam autoclaves, or send waste to treatment companies that are equipped with disinfection technologies.