Kolkata: The city airport has stopped treating personal protective equipment (PPE) as biomedical waste following a directive from the Central Pollution Control Board.
While the airport used to hand over the PPE kits collected in a yellow bag tagged as biohazard to a bio-medical waste handling agency, it is now keeping the discarded PPE in containers for 72 hours and then disposing them in black bags with general solid waste after cutting or shredding them so that they cannot be reused.
“We had appointed a biomedical waste agency in June to collect PPE discarded by passengers. That was done following guidelines issued by the ministry of health and family welfare. However, guidelines have since been revised that has exempted commercial establishments like airports from treating PPE as biomedical waste. Thus, the PPE are now being treated as dry solid waste after the cooling period of 72 hours,” airport director Kaushik Bhattacharjee said.
PPE waste generated at any healthcare activity within the airport premises is still required to be segregated as biomedical waste and treated and disposed through common biomedical waste treatment facility.
Ramakant Burman, managing director of Greentech Environ Pvt Ltd, which was collecting PPE waste from Kolkata and Bagdogra airports, said the latter was still handing the waste over to the agency for proper disposal but Kolkata airport had discontinued the service. “PPE is Covid waste. By treating it as municipal waste, they will land up in ordinary landfill sites where ragpickers will pick them up and may get infected,” he claimed.
However, airport officials pointed out that as per new protocol, the PPE was required to be stored for three days prior to disposal and that is what was being followed.
An official said PPE usage at the airport had also declined.
13/02/21 Subhro Niyogi/Times of India
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