Greek environmental officials said they have discovered more than 20 tons of hazardous hospital waste was dumped in the Fylis landfill, Athens’ main dumping ground outside the city, earlier in December, leading the government to set up an emergency plan to deal with medical refuse.
For January at least, there will be monitoring and sorting of hazardous medical waste on the premises of the landfill before it is burned at an incinerator. Regional and municipal authorities will require hospital officials to provide details about the waste they send to the dump and to dispatch two hospital employees with each consignment to monitor safety.
This was the fourth time in 10 days that the hazardous hospital materials, including gauze, tubes and intravenous drips, was brought to the landfill in dump trucks doing their regular rounds, leading officials to believe the facilities are unlawfully dumping the dangerous goods in street bins instead of taking required precautions.
That comes after a meeting between Health Minister Adonis Georgiadis, Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis and Athens Regional Governor Yiannis Sgouros. The plan is only a temporary scheme and hospital officials are being asked to develop more stringent longer-term plans to deal with dumping of dangerous materials used at their facilities.
“In a climate of cooperation and solidarity, we are helping the hospitals to emerge from a serious impasse,” Sgouros said, adding however that the authorities were not “substituting or removing the exclusive responsibility of hospitals to manage dangerous medical waste.”
Earlier in December, two truck drivers were arrested and their vehicles confiscated after they were caught attempting to discard hospital waste, including radioactive waste stemming from radiotherapies, at the landfill.
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