by Blanche S. Rivera, Philippine Daily Inquirer

EVERY DAY, 11 tons or roughly 110,000 kilos of hazardous waste from Metro Manila's health care facilities find their way into rivers and open dumpsites, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources revealed.

The untreated hazardous waste represents 41 percent, or almost half, of the total 27 tons generated daily by the 3,670 health care facilities in the metropolis that are registered with the Department of Health.

The waste comes from hospitals, medical schools, funeral parlors, pharmaceutical labs, dental and veterinary clinics, health centers, blood banks and even research institutions that do not have their own waste treatment facilities and cannot be accommodated in the country's waste treatment plants.

"The waste is probably thrown in open dumps or rivers and other bodies of water, so it has an adverse effect on health," Environment Secretary Michael T. Defensor said.

country, two of which are in Cavite province. The Visayas has none.

The six facilities have the capacity to treat only 16 tons of waste daily, leaving around 11 tons of toxic and hazardous waste unaccounted for, Environmental Management Bureau executive director Lolibeth Medrano said.

To address the alarming volume of untreated waste, the DENR and DoH set up a new system that makes proper waste treatment and disposal a requirement for licensing of a health care facility.

Defensor and Health Secretary Francisco T. Duque III signed the joint administrative order on the guidelines for the handling, treatment, storage and disposal of the hazardous waste at the DENR office in Quezon City last week.

"After the ban on incinerators, we've had problems on how to address health care waste. There was a huge gap in the treatment, and we could not monitor the waste disposal. This is a big step toward addressing that gap," Medrano said.

The joint administrative order followed two years of tedious discussions spanning different DoH and DENR chiefs.

Under the new system, hospitals and other health care institutions are required to register with the DENR as "hazardous waste generators" and submit a waste treatment plan before the DoH would renew their licenses.

Those who do not register with the DENR and who do not have the approved treatment facility or disposal plan would not get their licenses or accreditation from the DoH. Health care facilities renew their licenses yearly.

The discharges from health care facilities include general solid waste, infectious waste from laboratory work and dressing from wounds, chemical waste like disinfectants and corrosive materials, sharp wastes like needles, syringes and used scalpels, waste with heavy metal content, and pressurized containers.

Some hospitals, like St. Luke's Medical Center, operate their own treatment facilities but the smaller hospitals and clinics have to transport their waste to any of the six treatment plants accredited by the DENR.