Dangerous medical waste

In addition to thousands of tons of plastic and other debris strewn on our western beaches, from the recent sunken ship off Colombo Port, it is often reported our northern coasts are polluted by medical waste washed ashore from India.

It is interesting to know, what is happening to the huge heaps of medical waste, from millions of used and discarded anti-virus CV-19 injection phials, paired with injection syringes tipped with stainless steel needles, and how they are dealt with.

The phials and syringes are supposed to be made of borosilicate glass and lids of some plastic material which is punctured to extract the serum. How are they destroyed is baffling?   Are they being destroyed by crushing to powder or thrown to a furnace?

If these discarded phials and syringes get into wrong hands it would be a great danger as some unscrupulous villains could fill them with distilled water and sell them as genuine.

D. L. Sirimanne

Kohuwela