The COVID pandemic is not just a public health crisis. It is also an environmental one. After more than 430 million reported cases of the disease around the world, the pandemic has generated huge amounts of medical garbage in the form of test kits, gloves, masks, syringes and other products that people at clinics and hospitals use once and then toss away.
A recent report by the World Health Organization found the problem was global, but extreme in poorer countries where much of the refuse is simply burned in open pits and decrepit incinerators that lack pollution controls.
According to the WHO’s calculations, 87,000 metric tons of personal protective equipment and other medical products were shipped to countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Bangladesh between March 2020 and November 2021. Most of that material was used and then tossed away. But the WHO’s estimate only accounts for
— source scientificamerican.com | Charles Schmidt | Mar 7, 2022