Incinerator project meets WHO guidelines
Ms D’Alton accused Indaver of misrepresenting the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) position regarding incineration.
Ms D’Alton suggests the WHO considered the site of our proposed facility to be unsuitable for the location of a hazardous waste incinerator. The WHO never assessed our site. It does not assess individual projects. However, it does produce guidelines, which Indaver used in its site selection process.
WHO recommends in its guidelines that the four areas, such as erosion or flooding, which Ms Dalton referred to, can all be solved using ‘engineering possibilities’. This is what we intend to do.
Ms D’Alton also states that the WHO guidance on incineration is 10 years out of date. The WHO has written to Indaver confirming that ‘the current version is still from 1996, and there is no update underway’.
Finally, Ms D’Alton says the latest thinking of the WHO is that hazardous waste incinerators should be sited away from populated areas. Ms D’Alton is in fact referring to a publication produced by the WHO regarding the use of small-scale incinerators with no gas cleaning for the treatment of clinical waste.
These incinerators usually consist of a brick chamber with a chimney.
In this publication, the WHO recommends that in underdeveloped countries it is better to use these basic incinerators to dispose of clinical waste rather than leaving the waste untreated, but because they have no gas cleaning, a basic precaution should be to locate them away from populated areas.
Indaver’s facility proposed for Ringaskiddy has a state of the art gas cleaning system, which accounts for over 50% of the cost of the facility. It is therefore not comparable with such small-scale ‘homemade’ incinerators, which Ms D’Alton refers to.
Indaver takes the debate on public health and incineration very seriously.
We can only build and operate our facility once it has been assessed by An Bord Pleanála, the EPA, the Health and Safety Authority, and finally the courts.
We are confident that our proposal is a good project and will come through this thorough approval process successfully.
Jackie Keaney
Project Manager
Indaver Ireland
4 Haddington Terrace
Dun Laoghaire
Co Dublin.
