Your recent series on medical waste incineration at Northwest Hospital have been very informative and helpful in making more Seattleites aware that the only medical waste incinerator in the Puget Sound region is located in North Seattle. Many of your readers may not be aware that Seattle's zoning code makes it illegal to operate incinerators except in an industrial-zoned area, and, in fact, no other incinerators of any type operate within our city limits.

Unfortunately, a loophole in the regulations exempts hospitals from this requirement if the incinerator is classified "an accessory," as this one, of course, is, so we have ended up with Northwest's incinerator right smack in the middle of a single-family zoned neighborhood.

In addition to small amounts of toxic heavy metals such as mercury, lead and cadmium, all of which play havoc with health and the environment in tiny amounts, all medical waste incinerators emit even more insidious and hazardous toxins such as furans and the notorious family of dioxins, consisting of dozens of toxic chlorinated poisons.

Dioxin, by far the most toxic chemical ever produced, first achieved notoriety as a perhaps unforeseen unwanted and unavoidable contaminant in the Viet-Nam era defoliant Agent Orange. Dioxin produces dire health effects at levels hundreds and thousands of times lower than most "traditional" poisons. Just as in Agent Orange, dioxin is unavoidable in medical waste incinerator emissions.

Despite the very latest and best incineration and control technologies, which have become available since Northwest's incinerator was designed and built, it has proved impossible to construct equipment that can burn many of the plastics used by healthcare institutions and then subsequently remove all of their extremely toxic byproducts.

Even those that are removed may end up mixed with regular garbage and hauled to out of state to be landfilled, greatly increasing the probability that these toxic materials will re-enter the environment in the future.

Once a year this incinerator is tested for hydrogen chloride (hydrochloric acid) and large particle emissions. Northwest claims its failure to pass the last annual hydrogen chloride test was the result of "the inadvertent burning of a plastic bucket."

It was more likely the result of the intentional burning, over a period of at least four months, of a very large number of plastic buckets, in a "state-of-the-art" incinerator that has proved to be totally unable to either detect or control the resulting emissions.

The only way to avoid these and other pollutants produced by incineration is simply not to incinerate.

Although this is a simple idea that other hospitals in our region understand and follow, Northwest's management has yet to grasp and come to terms with this concept.

For reasons that some might conclude to perhaps be based more on accounting than accountability, Northwest still strains credibility by asserting that "the cleanest, safest, most cost-effective (method of disposing) medical waste." is by producing and emitting into the community a large and measurable variety of known harmful toxics.

State Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson carried a protest sign at a Jan. 3 vigil at Northwest Hospital. The Seattle Times had this quote: "I think it's ironic that an institution devoted to health is doing something to the community."

County Councilmember Maggi Fimia and City Councilmember Peter Steinbrueck, both of whom live near Northwest's incinerator, will co-moderate a public forum on medical waste incineration on Feb. 17, 7 p.m. at Broadview-Thompson School, 13052 Greenwood Ave. N. (in the cafeteria).

Vision 2020, the Broadview-Bitter Lake-Haller Lake neighborhood planning organization, is presenting this forum to give area residents an opportunity to learn about the operations and regulation of the Northwest Hospital medical waste incinerator, and to assess and mitigate potential health and environmental concerns.

They have invited a panel composed of top-ranking officers, directors and decision-makers of Northwest Hospital, the Puget Sound Air Pollution Control Agency, Seattle Public Utilities, Department of Construction and Land Use, and the Seattle/King County Department of Public Health, as well as representatives from Physicians for Social Responsibility, Community Coalition for Environmental Justice and the Neighborhood Planning Organization.

Seattle Health Care Without Harm, a health-oriented group allied with Physicians for Social Responsibility, has a brand-new hotline, 363-BURN, where the public can get updates and leave messages.

- RICK BARRETT,
Haller Lake