Hospital gets help recycling fluorescent lights

By Frank (F. Ellsworth) Lockwood

Published in The Hermiston Herald, January 23, 2003

Hermiston--  A special grant is now aimed at easing the pain of recycling- for hospitals.  The grant will help Good Shepherd Medical Center deal with used Fluorescent light tubes, which contain mercury.

In the past two years, while treating over 100,000 annual aches, pains, and health concerns, Good Shepherd reportedly handled about 14 tons of paper- enough to cause a real headache for any business other than a stouthearted recycler.

But paper is just one waste stream for Good Shepherd Health Care system, Plastic is another.  And the hospital and other aware businesses realize that burned- out- fluorescent light tubes can prepare a risk to the environment.  Gone are the days when the tubes could be just dumped into the landfill, now businesses are supposed to dispose of them properly.

“If it comes in the front door, it’s got to go out the back door sooner or later,” the hospital’s Environmental Services Manager, Ken Gummer said.  He was speaking of the tons of supplies, food, wrappers and other items that must be disposed of each year. Gummer’s job is to see that the waste is handled in a way that protects the environment and the public.

Inoperable fluorescent tubes can create a hazard because they still contain toxic metals, including cadmium and mercury.  Gummer said, Mercury is considered a serious health hazard and according to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), health care facilities are the fourth – largest source of mercury in the environment.  Mercury, which is highly toxic to the human central nervous system, kidneys and liver, is commonly used in blood pressure monitoring devices, thermometers, batteries and fluorescent light bulbs.

Good Shepherd will receive a share of a grant that helps health providers to recycle mercury-containing fluorescent lamps.  Grant recipients contribute matching money, staff time or services.  The City of Milwaukie, working in partnership with the Portland-based Oregon Center for Environmental Health, was awarded $20,238 to help the Center develop fluorescent lamp recycling program at Legacy Health System in Portland, Asante Health System in Medford, and Good Shepherd Health System In Hermiston.

Gummer said he had not yet been told the amount that Good Shepherd would receive, but the money will help pay transportation costs to ship used fluorescent bulbs to a proper disposal sight.  According to a DEQ press release, The grant is an incentive for hospitals to participate in a statewide recycling program.  At least 50,000 mercury-containing fluorescent lamps will be diverted from the solid waste stream from 10 to 15 hospitals in the first year, with additional hospitals taking part in the future.  The Oregon Center for Environmental Health-part of the Oregon health Care Without Harm campaign- will monitor recycling efforts at each participating hospital, will train staff and will help set up the program.

Good Shepherd has already been training for better waste management, and has hosted one of three seminars on Health Care Without Harm.  The seminars teach health care representatives how to keep material out of the waste stream, through recycling, and how to reduce toxins to the environment.  Invitations were sent out to hospitals, nursing homes, and other health care institutions.  “We re trying to promote recycling in rural Oregon,” Gummer said.

More information is available on the internet at www.noharm.org, he said, “ Oregon was the first state to ban fever thermometers last year, in early 2002, because of mercury, Gummer said.

Various hospital waste streams are kept separate from each other and, if hazardous, treated accordingly.  For example, biohazards are handled, by contract, through a company and are not part the universal waste stream.  Waste silver, present in film, is extracted by a contractor.  The hospital is looking for a sponsor for a plastics recycling program. And the hospital will dispose of diabetics needles if they bring them in a proper container as described by the law, Gummer said. As to paper waste, the hospital uses Columbia Industries, a not- for-profit company that hires physically and mentally challenged people to recycle paper. “We make a lot of paper,” Gummer said.

Fluorescent tubes, though small in terms of the tons of them used by the hospital, are a potentially harmful waste stream because of the mercury they contain.  Laws that were changed a long time ago are now being enforced, but that is good.  Gummer said, “We don’t want to put nasty things down the drain, or to contaminate the atmosphere.”  Recycling also reduce the landfill bill, he said.  GSH Public Relations Director, Tricia Fenley commented, “Good Shepherd is excited to participate in the trend towards recycling.”        

Chem Demil could lose $Millions (Columbia Basin Media article lifted from CWWG)

Author's note:  Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG) preserved this story on their web page at http://www.cwwg.org, on Dec. 19, 2005. Thank you to CWWG

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Story by F. Ellsworth Lockwood

The Pentagon has targeted new "alternative" chemical weapons programs for budget cuts, disappointing anti-incineration groups which view "alt-tech" as cleaner, safer, faster and cheaper than the present technologies.

Anti-incineration groups such as Chemical Weapons Working Group, GASP, Sierra Club and Oregon Wildlife Federation had hailed the new programs in Colorado and Kentucky as proof that the Army had now approved and accepted other methods of destruction besides so-called "baseline incineration" which they believe is dangerous to health and the environment. CWWG indicated the budget changes will eliminate disposal activities at sites important for demonstrating that alternative technologies are indeed viable.

The reports should be credible if the past is any indication: CWWG has at times been even better at projecting such things as cost overrides and scheduling changes than the Army's own press relations department. Pentagon documents showed that for 2006 the Pentagon is planning to allocate only $30 million for both Colorado and Kentucky, although those programs had been estimated to cost at $250 million or more. CWWG says completion of weapons disposal at Colorado and Kentucky would require $2 billion between 2006 and 2011, but that the Pentagon plans to cut funding for these programs down to a little more than $300 million for that time period.

Cuts of that size would likely halt alternative demolition of chemical weapons at storage sites in Richmond, Kentucky and Pueblo, Colorado. The Army apparently had the budget cutting plans before Christmas. Along with local, state and federal elected officials, the CWWG distributed a Pentagon decision document dated 21 December 2004, which referred to the possible delay of the program at both sites due to "external constraints the program must address." The same document is also being circulated in Colorado now. CWWG's Director, Craig Williams, denounced the planned cuts, calling them the Defense Department's “blatant disregard for the safety of tens of thousands of Americans due to extremely poor funding priorities.

The plans, if implemented, have international implications. "This funding approach makes compliance with the 2012 Chemical Weapons Convention deadline impossible, and is an admission by the United States that it is backing off its obligations regarding the Treaty," said Williams. Williams also questioned what he termed an Army “flip-flop” in regard to safety and security of communities living near the Kentucky stockpile. "Communities ... have been told for 20 years that the military will do whatever it takes to get rid of these weapons, because the risks (of continued storage) are so high,” Williams said, “And now that they (the Pentagon) are in a financial crunch we are being told that they have to let the weapons sit."

Williams also said that a 2002 classified report to Congress by the Secretary of the Army indicated Kentucky is considered to be the chemical weapons stockpile site at the highest risk for terrorism after 2007. Already, in 2004,the Pentagon pulled funds for chemical weapons disposal in Pueblo, Colorado, although Congress, fearing that the weapons sites could be terrorist targets, had requested the Army to accelerate the weapons disposal process, CWWG reported.

Pueblo resident and environmental activist Ross Vincent today said, "These funding cuts are a slap in the faces of our elected officials and the citizens of Colorado, who are working together for a safe disposal of these weapons. To the Pentagon we may be a number on a defense budget line item, but this is a real community facing real problems and risks."

Kentucky Senior Senator Mitch McConnell, in a prepared statement read by his representative at a press conference in Kentucky said, "The Department of Defense has an obligation to the citizens of Central Kentucky to dispose of chemical agents at the Blue Grass Army Depot in a safe and expeditious manner, and I will continue to devote my energy to ensuring that it lives up to that obligation."

Other presenters at Wednesday's press conference echoed the Senator's resolve, committing to fight for the funds necessary to move forward and not allow these weapons of mass destruction to languish in their community for another decade.

The cuts come twenty years after Congress ordered the U.S. Army to destroy its stockpile of obsolete chemical weapons, and at a time of concerns about terrorist threats. The Pentagon plans if implemented would cut funds for disposal of more than 3,134 tons of chemical weapons, according to CWWG, and this number represents 15 percent of the U.S. stockpile that remains to be destroyed.
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