The World Bank should stop funding medical waste incinerators and ensure that its projects only allow burning of medical waste when unavoidable, according to a report presented Friday by a nongovernmental organization in Tokyo.
The report lambastes the financial institution for promoting the burning of medical waste in projects around the world when it clearly poses a health risk because of the dangerous chemicals released during incineration. The report contends that while as little as 2 percent of medical garbage needs to be incinerated or sterilized, at least 30 World Bank projects in 20 countries advocate medical waste incineration as central to waste processing.
The unnecessary burning of materials -- plastics, paper and equipment -- needlessly releases various pollutants, including dioxin and mercury, into the environment, the report says.
Compiled by two U.S.-based NGOs, Multinationals Resource Center and Health Care Without Harm, the report was released in the U.S. in late June.
"We think it is important for the Japanese public to know about the threats to the environment and their health, where their (tax) money is going and the relationship between those two things," said Neil Tangri of MRC, a Washington-based NGO that helped pen the report.
The report calls the promotion of medical waste incineration in developing countries an "environmental double standard" for promoting technologies no longer accepted in developed countries and claims that less-expensive alternative technologies exist and should be used.
Next to the United States, Japan contributes the second-largest amount of money to the World Bank. World Bank officials were unavailable for comment.