Heavy Metal Pollution from Hospital Waste Incinerators: A Case Study from Al-Muthanna Province, Iraq

Abstract

Waste incineration (WI) is the most popular method of hospital waste (HW) disposal in many developing countries. Most hospitals generate large quantities of toxic and persistent waste, which are managed by burning in incinerators. Basically, high concentrations of heavy metal in the food chain are generated from ash residue after burning process. As a result, these concentrations lead to harmful effects on the public health as well as environment. This study aims to investigate the concentrations of heavy metal in the ash of incinerated waste HW1 and HW2 that generated in two hospitals at Samawah and Rumaitha cities, respectively. Ash samples were collected within three months from medium and small incinerators. The concentrations of Cd, Cr, Cu, Pb, Fe and Zn metals were measured using Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS). The concentrations of heavy metal were sorted in descending order as follows: Fe, Zn, Ni, Cu, Pb, Cr and Cd. For both hospital waste, the Fe level was ranged between 76.6 and 25.3 μg/g while other metal levels were varied as follows: Cd (4.6-1.4 μg/g), Zn (35.6-5.6 μg/g) and Cu (17.2-4.0 μg/g). The concentration of Pb in HW2 was found relatively higher than in HW1. The concentration of Pb was varied as (21.6-7.5 μg/g) in HW2 and (15.6-5.4 μg/g) in HW1. Whereas the Cr and Ni concentrations were found as (14.7-1.1 μg/g) and (6.717-3.3 μg/g) in HW1 and HW2, respectively. According to the EPA Law, the concentrations of all samples exceeded the maximum permissible heavy metal levels and can be classified as toxic and risky levels.