Medical-waste Burner

摘要

Ever wonder where your tonsils and gallbladder go once the anesthesia wears off? If your doctors are following the law, those go out the door as medical waste. At BioMedical Waste Solutions, based in Port Arthur, Texas, a fleet of leakproof trucks brings tons of trash each day to its processing facility, where a technician wearing gloves, goggles and a protective suit pulls the bags of waste from the tubs and loads them into a plastic-lined stainless-steel hopper, which is wheeled into a 6-by-13-foot autoclave. The operator vacuums the air out of the chamber before injecting it with 45 psi of 300℉ steam, cooking and sterilizing the syringes, bloody gauze, and bottles of semen and urine for 40 minutes. (Limbs and chemo supplies go to specialty incinerators.) The aroma is what gets to you. "When it comes out the other end, it smells like dog food mixed with burning plas- tic," says Wes Sonnier, who began the company in 2005 and now processes 12 tons of waste a day. The steaming glop, which is full of melted rubber gloves, bandages and syringes, is then machine-compacted before being dropped off at the municipal dump.