
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 17, 1994                   TAG: 9411170088
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                 LENGTH: Medium

HOSPITALS TO BUILD WASTE PLANT

More than half of Virginia's major hospitals are joining together to build a high-tech medical-waste disposal plant that officials say will be environmentally safe.

Fifty-two of the state's 98 major hospitals plan to join the Virginia Health Care Waste Management Cooperative Inc., said cooperative vice president John McMahon. Sixteen more hospitals have offered preliminary commitments, he said.

McMahon said the cooperative expects to open the $5 million, member-owned waste disposal plant in 12 to 18 months. Sites in South Hill, Dinwiddie and elsewhere in central Virginia are being considered.

A cooperative is ``probably the best way to go, because all the hospitals have the same problems, and that's skyrocketing costs'' for waste disposal, said Curtis Mills, senior vice president of Roanoke-based Carilion Health System.

The cooperative has struck a deal to buy Sci-Med Inc. of Roanoke and Winston-Salem, N.C., a medical-waste hauler. Members will use the company to transport waste, beginning early next year.

Emerging technology that offers a cleaner and more efficient alternative to incinerators, which hospitals now use, made the project possible, McMahon said. Vance Incandescent Disposal System Inc., which developed the process, said the cooperative's disposal plant will use intense heat to reduce waste to its basic elements without burning.

Wastes ``almost vaporize,'' said Randy Smith, director of medical products for Vance IDS, based in Orlando, Fla.

Incandescent disposal reaches about 15,000 degrees Fahrenheit, about 10 times as hot as an incinerator, Smith said. He said the closed system has no smokestack and produces neither air emissions nor hazardous waste.

What's left behind falls in two categories: granules of stainless steel, silicone, or glass that will be used as filler by asphalt and concrete makers, and a carbon substance that will be recycled and used in toner for copy machines and printers.

Mills said Carilion hopes to save 25 percent in disposal costs.

by CNB