The figure was revealed in the Alice Springs regional waste management facility report for October.

The dead pet you asked the vet to dispose of will end up buried in landfill, in most places across the country, and Alice Springs is no different.

“It’s a combination of horses, dogs, cats, pigs, any animal that dies,” said Alice Springs council technical services director Greg Buxton. “Road kill, kangaroos and that, the rangers pick them up, and you’ve got to dispose of them somewhere hygienic. So we put them at the back of landfill.”

The facility is on track to exceed last year’s total, with 3.7 tonnes deposited in the first quarter of this financial year.

Mr Buxton said most regional councils across the country dispose of dead animals in landfill.

“In the bigger cities they have an incinerator type setting where they cremate them, whereas we don’t have an incinerator here,” he said.

by: http://www.news.com.au/national/northern-territory/central-australias-animal-graveyard/story-fnn3gfdo-1227123002725

FARGO, N.D. — California health officials have given notice that North Dakota is one of six states that could receive Ebola medical waste in the event the state has any material to incinerate.

In a notice posted last week, the California Department of Public Health listed North Dakota as one of six states where California sends medical waste to be incinerated when onsite disposal is not available at medical centers.

Healthcare Environmental Services Inc., located at an industrial park at 1420 40th St. N. in Fargo, operates a medical waste incinerator that also accepts waste from other locations.

Calls to Healthcare Environmental Services on Tuesday afternoon were not returned.

The company is owned by Sanford Health. A Sanford spokeswoman said it could not immediately comment on the possible incineration of Ebola waste from California at the Fargo facility.

So far, California has no known Ebola cases, according to the state health department, which spelled out its interim guidelines for safe handling of medical waste in an alert to providers and others.

In another development, public health officials are monitoring two North Dakota residents who recently returned from countries in West Africa that are battling the Ebola epidemic.

Neither of the two residents is running a temperature or showing any symptoms of an Ebola infection, which can include diarrhea, joint and muscle aches and abnormal bleeding.

“They’ve just recently traveled to the area,” said epidemiologist Michelle Feist of the North Dakota Health Department. “They pose no risk to the community.”

Health officials are not releasing information about where the two people reside.

Public health officials in Minnesota and South Dakota also are monitoring residents in those states who have recently visited Guinea, Liberia or Sierra Leone in West Africa, where an outbreak of Ebola has killed about 5,000.

State health officials are contacted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when someone is entering the United States from those countries through five major international airports.

“We are doing monitoring,” said Sam Brungardt, a public information officer for the Minnesota Health Department.

On Monday, Minnesota health officials announced that they were monitoring one resident who had traveled to West Africa, but the list of people to monitor is growing.

“It has grown, and it will continue to grow as we get reports from the CDC,” Brungardt said. “There’s people who are returning from these three West African countries every day.”

So far, none of those being monitored for signs of fever with twice-daily temperature checks show any sign of infection, he said.

As a precaution, however, they will continue to be checked during the 21-day observation period, generally regarded as the incubation period for the Ebola virus.

South Dakota health officials also are monitoring someone who recently returned from West Africa, but is not showing symptoms.

by: http://bismarcktribune.com/news/state-and-regional/n-d-could-receive-ebola-waste-from-calif/article_10e0e242-5f2c-11e4-8ff8-8ba8bab48ce3.html

The permit that allows the Radford Army Ammunitions Plant to burn hazardous waste from firearms outdoors is up for renewal. Community activists see an opportunity to address environmental and health concerns about the open burning – and state regulators see a chance to explore new technology to solve an old problem.
Just a handful of people turned at the Blacksburg Public Library on a recent afternoon for a meeting of the Environmental Patriots of the New River Valley.

“Is there anything we could post to get more people involved? Yes, petitions, a letter campaign… When the EPA was pushed to the wall in Louisiana, they said ‘Uncle.’ So, we want you Senator Kaine and you Senator Warner to do just what Senator Vitter did in Louisiana and write to the EPA and ask them, ‘How is this not a violation of the clean air act?'”

Devawn Oberlender is looking to take a pager from the book of a far away town, where citizen protestors succeeded in stopping outdoor burning explosives of arms and weapons waste at the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant.

“The opportunity that we have right now only comes up very ten years, because the permit is good for ten years, so what we need to replicate is what they did in north western Louisiana at Camp Minden.

There they formed a “Stop the Burn” movement that ultimately brought together elected officials, state and local regulators and the army for a plan to give up open burning and use a modern indoor incinerator to dispose of the toxic materials. Now, with the open burning permit at the Radford Arsenal up for renewal, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is exploring that idea for the first time. William Hayden is spokesman for DEQ in Virginia.

“We have not reached any conclusions yet but that is something that would be looked at as we move forward. We have asked the Arsenal to come up with alternatives to open burning and we do expect to have some options that go beyond the idea of just burning it the open.”

Brian Salvatore is a professor of Organic chemistry at Louisiana State University who argued for using contained incineration.

“This is what we fought for here at camp Minden. And yes it added another 15million dollars and almost doubled the cost of the contract but this was something that, the EPA was willing to go to bat for us for. So I’m glad that the people in the EPA and in the state worked together here and they worked with the Army as well to find the additional money. And we’re quite satisfied here that this alternative — which, in the beginning of this we didn’t know all the details of what these modern incinerators can do. We’re quite confident here that this is going to do the job and the amount of material that’s going to be released total will be on the order of tens of grams as opposed to tons of these emissions.”

A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 3, which includes Virginia, said it could not comment on the possibility of incinerators like that being adopted at the Radford site, but a spokesperson for BAE Systems, the contractor in charge of the arsenal, confirmed it is “looking for viable alternatives to its current methods of waste disposal.”

The department of Environmental Quality has asked BAE to conduct an environmental impact study on its current open burning practice. William Hayden says it’s the first time DEQ has asked for one.

“Because we’re getting in to an issue that has generated a lot of public interest in the Radford area we knew that the more information we had, the better. People from the public have been asking for us information; they’ve been asking Radford (the arsenal) for information.”

And one of them is Oberlender who says, “We’ve been burning waste out there, open burning it since 1941. You know, it’s not going away.”

And neither are the environmental patriots of the new river valley. Taking another page from the story of Camp Minden Louisiana’s successful effort to get its outdoor burning moved indoors. They’re scheduling meetings with state and federal officials to keep the pressure on. The first is this Friday with U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith who sits on the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has oversight of the EPA. The group is looking to make a national issue out of one that has for so long been so local and one of the few places where open burning of hazardous waste from explosives is still allowed.

Info from: http://wvtf.org/post/moving-forward-open-burning

Medical Waste Incinerator

Manual load twin chamber incinerator for medical waste to burn 50kg/hr on continuous operation, with Primary temperature in the region of 800degC minimum and 1200degC or more in the Secondary chamber, complete with charging door, Ash door, Air and view ports, auxiliary air system with adjustable dampers, burners and burner control system and ignition unit, the whole to meet NEMA requirements and other international standards.

People living and working in Nunavut often have limited options available for cost effective and environmentally sound

management of household and other solid waste. The widespread presence of permafrost, lack of adequate cover material and

remote locations make open burning and incineration a common and widespread practice to reduce the volume of solid waste and

make it less of an attractant to wildlife.  A wide variety of combustion methods are used ranging from open burning on the

ground to high temperature dual-chamber commercial incinerators.  Generally, high temperature incinerators are more expensive

to purchase and operate and cause less pollution than do the less expensive and lower temperature methods.  However, high

temperature incinerators can safely dispose of a wider variety of waste than can the lower temperature open burning methods.

The Guideline for the Burning and Incineration of Solid Waste (the Guideline) is not intended to promote or endorse the

burning and incineration of solid waste. It is intended to be a resource for traditional, field and commercial camp

operators, communities and others considering burning and incineration as an element of their solid waste management program.

It examines waste burning and incineration methods that are used in Nunavut, their hazards and risks and outlines best

management practices that can reduce impacts on the environment, reduce human-wildlife interactions and ensure worker and

public health and safety. This Guideline does not address incineration of biomedical waste, hazardous waste and sewage

sludge. The management of these wastes requires specific equipment, operational controls and training that are beyond the

scope of the current document.

The Environmental Protection Act enables the Government of Nunavut to implement measures to preserve, protect and enhance the

quality of the environment. Section 2.2 of the Act provides the Minister with authority to develop, coordinate, and

administer the Guideline.

The Guideline is not an official statement of the law. For further information and guidance, the owner or person in charge,

management or control of a solid waste is encouraged to review all applicable legislation and consult the Department of

Environment, other regulatory agencies or qualified persons with expertise in the management of solid waste.

A single Ebola patient treated in a U.S. hospital will generate eight 55-gallon barrels of medical waste each day.

Protective gloves, gowns, masks and booties are donned and doffed by all who approach the patient’s bedside and then discarded. Disposable medical instruments, packaging, bed linens, cups, plates, tissues, towels, pillowcases and anything that is used to clean up after the patient must be thrown away.

Even curtains, privacy screens and mattresses eventually must be treated as contaminated medical waste and disposed of.

Dealing with this collection of pathogen-filled debris without triggering new infections is a legal and logistical challenge for every U.S. hospital now preparing for a potential visit by the virus.

In California and other states, it is an even worse waste-management nightmare.

While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends autoclaving (a form of sterilizing) or incinerating the waste as a surefire means of destroying the microbes, burning infected waste is effectively prohibited in California, and banned in several other states.

“Storage, transportation and disposal of this waste will be a major problem,” California Hospital Association President C. Duane Dauner warned Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., in a letter last week.

Even some states that normally permit incineration are throwing up barriers to Ebola waste.

In Missouri, the state attorney general has sought to bar Ebola-contaminated debris from a St. Louis incinerator operated by Stericycle Inc., the nation’s largest medical waste disposal company.

Due to restrictions on burning, California hospital representatives say their only option appears to be trucking the waste over public highways and incinerating it in another state — a prospect that makes some environmental advocates uneasy.

Rules for transport

Under federal transportation guidelines, the material would be designated a Class A infectious substance, or one that is capable of causing death or permanent disability, and would require special approval from the Department of Transportation, hospital representatives say.

“These are some pretty big issues and they need some quick attention,” said Jennifer Bayer, spokeswoman for the Hospital Association of Southern California.

“We fully expect that it’s coming our way,” Bayer said of the virus. “Not to create any sort of scare, but just given the makeup of our population and the hub that we are. It’s very likely.”

The Ebola virus is essentially a string of genetic material wrapped in a protein jacket. It cannot survive a 1,500-degree scorching within an incinerator, or the prolonged, pressurized steam of an autoclave.

“The Ebola virus itself is not particularly hardy,” CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden said under questioning on Capitol Hill recently. “It’s killed by bleach, by autoclaving, by a variety of chemicals.”

However, CDC guidelines note that “chemical inactivation” has yet to be standardized and could trigger worker safety regulations.

Getting ready

California health officials recently tried to reassure residents that the state’s private and public hospitals were up to the task and were actively training for the possible arrival of Ebola.

“Ebola does not pose a significant public health risk to California communities at the present time,” said Dr. Gil Chavez, an epidemiologist and deputy director at the California Department of Public Health. “Let me tell you why: Current scientific evidence specifies that people cannot get Ebola through the air, food or water. … The Ebola virus does not survive more than a few hours on impervious surfaces.”

It was unclear whether California officials viewed the waste issue as a potential problem.

Although one-third of the state’s private hospitals and “a few” of its public hospitals reported to Boxer’s office that there would be problems complying with the CDC’s incineration recommendation, and others, a state public health official told reporters he was not aware of any conflicts.

Dr. David Perrott, chief medical officer for the California Hospital Association, said there was also confusion about whether infected human waste could be flushed down the toilet.

“Here’s what we’ve heard from the CDC: It’s OK,” Perrott said. “But then we’ve heard from some sources, that maybe we need to sterilize it somehow and then flush it down the toilet or you have to check with local authorities. It sounds maybe a little gross, but there is a real question about what to do with that waste.”

Overreaction?

Dr. Thomas Ksiazek, a professor of microbiology and immunology of the University of Texas Medical Branch, has said he believes there’s been a lot of overreaction about Ebola medical waste.

“There are other ways to deal with the waste; autoclaving would be chief among them,” Ksiazek said. “The problem is, most hospitals don’t use it for most disposable items. They’re quite happy to bag them up and send them to a regular medical disposal company.”

But Allen Hershkowitz, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said incineration is simple and effective, and should be available to hospitals to help dispose of the mountain of waste.

Hershkowitz said states began to crack down on medical waste incineration years ago because materials that didn’t need to be burned were being sent to combustors and were emitting dangerous pollutants.

In this case of Ebola medical waste, he said California should reconsider its restrictions.

“There’s no pollutant that’s going to come out of a waste incinerator that’s more dangerous than the Ebola virus,” Hershkowitz said. “When you’re dealing with pathogenic and biological hazards, sometimes the safest thing to do is combustion.”

by: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Another-challenge-disposing-of-waste-5909413.php