Evaluation of medical waste disposal methods in Istanbul by life cycle analysis

Medical wastes generated during the activities of healthcare organizations are difficult to manage in waste management and are disposed of by sterilization and incineration in our country. The amount of medical waste increasing in a way to threaten human and environmental health and uncertainty of its environmental dimensions that may occur during its disposal are one of the biggest problems today. The primary purpose of this study is to determine the environmental impacts of medical waste disposal methods by life cycle analysis (LCA). As the functional unit, medical wastes collected in the city of Istanbul in 2017 were taken into consideration. The system boundaries are the collection of medical waste and transportation to a disposal facility, disinfection of medical waste vehicles, and disposal of collected medical waste by sterilization and incineration methods. For life cycle analysis, SimaPro 8.4 software and the CML-IA impact category were employed. The impact groups of this method are abiotic depletion, depletion of abiotic fossil resources, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, acidification, and eutrophication. When the comparative life cycle analysis of the sterilization and incineration plants including their transportation phases was made, it was seen that the incineration plant created the highest effect on the other categories except for the six categories. The incineration plant, due to the electricity gain in the categories of abiotic depletion and depletion of abiotic fossil resources, is more environmentally friendly than the sterilization facility for these two categories. The incineration plant has the highest impact on the categories of global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, photochemical oxidation, and acidification. The sterilization facility has the highest impact in the freshwater ecotoxicity, marine ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, and eutrophication categories. In the normalization phase, where the highest impact is found out by comparing all environmental impact potentials with each other, it was observed that the highest impact was produced in the human toxicity category by the incineration plant. Then, for the marine ecotoxicity category, it was found that the highest impact arose from the sterilization facility. Flue gas emissions such as SOx, NOx, CO, and dioxin originating from incineration plants cause human toxicity and marine ecotoxicity.