By CLAYTON PARK

Wednesday, Jan. 6, is "D-Day" in community activist Rick Barrett's book - that the day Northwest Hospital plans to test its on-site medical waste incinerator by firing it up for the first time in five months.

The hospital temporarily suspended use of its incinerator on Aug. 8 after monitoring detected an increase in hydrogen chloride emissions that exceeded the level allowed by the state's Environmental Protection Agency.

Northwest Hospital spokeswoman Suzi Beerman said the hospital believes it has pinpointed the cause of the problem: the burning of new dense plastic containers its laboratory recently started using to collect medical waste.

Now that those containers are no longer being used, Beerman said the hospital is hopeful that the one-day test will show that the incinerator's emission levels are once again well within EPA standards.

Nevertheless, Barrett, a Haller Lake resident who lives a half block away from the incinerator, wants to turn the hospital's temporary suspension of its incinerator into a permanent one.

On Saturday, Jan. 2, Barrett plans to organize a protest vigil in front of the hospital's main entrance, from 10:30 a.m. to noon. He is also planning a "D-Day (D for Dioxin)" event on Jan. 6 when the hospital conducts its test.

Northwest's test calls for burning 6,000 pounds of medical waste - the amount that the hospital intends to start burning on a per-day basis once it gets the go-ahead to resume regular operation of the incinerator from the Puget Sound Air Pollution Control Agency.

The 6,000-pound amount would be a 50 percent reduction from the amount the hospital was burning prior to the Aug. 8 shutdown. The hospital will continue to limit use of the incinerator to no more than three days a week, said Beerman.

Northwest became the last hospital in town to still burn its medical waste when VA Hospital on Beacon Hill announced its decision to permanently shut its incinerator in September.

Northwest officials say the difference between their incinerator and the incinerators that other hospitals had been using is that its incinerator, which went on-line in 1992, is newer, more "state of the art" - and therefore safer and more efficient.

Of course, Northwest also has another reason for continuing to use its incinerator: it's a heckuva lot cheaper than carting it all off to Morton, Wash., where waste disposal company Stericycle is located. Using its incinerator would cut down the amount of waste it trucks to Stericycle by a third.

Burning waste also reduces exposure risks to Northwest's staff, said Beerman.

TAKING THE INCINERATOR "TOUR":
Joe Mitchell, manager of facilities for Northwest, recently invited the Jet City Maven to tour its incinerator to see just how "safe" it is.

We walked through big black iron doors marked "Danger: Authorized Personnel Only" to enter a vast boiler room.

Mitchell pointed out several white plastic carts that are loaded up with medical waste and weighed. "We can only burn 100 pounds per load," he explains, adding that it takes six minutes to burn each load. "A lot of people say we're burning a humongous amount of medical waste, but we can only burn 600 pounds an hour max," he says.

After being weighed, the waste is wheeled into a primary burning chamber where it is ignited via natural gas flame at a temperature of approximately 1,600 degrees farenheit.

The thick black smoke that is created is sucked into a secondary chamber where it is ignited at 1,850 degrees until completely burned up.

What's left over, if anything, is then pulled into another secondary chamber where it is again burned at 1,850 degrees.

What I have left then is hot air," says Mitchell. "There's no steam, no smoke, no nothing."

The hot air is cooled down and passed through a heat recovery boiler, which generates steam used to provide heat for the building as well as for autoclaves. "Why would you waste all that heat?" asks Mitchell.

The air is then sucked into what Mitchell refers to as a "baghouse" where bicarbonate soda is injected that acts as a chemical base to neutralize any residual hydrochloric acid particles. "The bicarbonate soda adheres to the bags which get shaken until the particles fall out the bottom.

The hot air, which by now has been cooled to 400 to 500 degrees, then goes up the stack. Whatever emissions of HCL or other toxins that remain have been reduced to trace amounts and are well within the EPA's allowances, hospital officials say.

"In terms of (health) risk, I'd rather be breathing the air coming out of this stack than be standing next to I-5," said Mitchell.

DEBATE OVER MONITORING:
The hospital also operates a Continuous Monitoring System that checks the incinerator's carbon monoxide, opacity and oxygen levels as well as the temperatures while it is in use. The results are automatically recorded on tape and shipped to PSAPCA at the end of each day.

What isn't monitored on a continuous basis is the incinerator's hydrochloric acid emissions - a process that hospital officials up to now have said is not "reasonably available or economically feasible." PSAPCA has responded by waiving this requirement of the Clean Air Act of 1990. The hospital conducts manual tests for HCL emissions on a periodic basis.

Barrett wants that waiver rescinded. If Northwest is required to continuously monitor its incinerator for HCL emissions, he believes the hospital will have no choice but to permanently shut it down.

James Nolan, PSAPCA's director of compliance, said his agency is "going to be revisiting this (the waiver) with the hospital to see if there are any monitoring devices on the market they can now employ."

However, Nolan added that one shouldn't automatically assume that Northwest's incinerator would fail to meet the EPA's standards for HCL emissions, if continuously monitored.

"Northwest's track record has been quite good," he said, noting that the Aug. 8 incident was "the first time that Northwest had not passed that test."

He added: "I can tell you categorically that we would never allow the incinerator to be used if it presented any kind of health hazard."

Northwest Hospital's community relation's department can be reached by calling 364-0500.

Rick Barrett's group, Seattle Citizens for Quality Living, is organizing several protests. For more information about the vigils, call Barrett at 363-4992.