Amy Uchida, 4th Year Medical Student at the U of U, is Asked About Stericycle’s Incineration of Deadly Prions

(EnviroNews Utah) – According to documents on the Department of Environmental Quality website, Stericycle’s permit needs to be renewed by August 19, 2013. The company’s current permit expires on Feb. 19, 2014.

Regg Olsen is listed as the contact at the Department of Air Quality (DAQ) in charge of the air quality permit. Currently, Stericycle is allowed to “treat non hazardous medical waste and other non medical wastes by the Utah Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste.”

This nonhazardous medical waste “is also referred to as ‘infectious waste,’ which, by definition, is ‘a solid waste that contains or may reasonably be expected to contain pathogens of sufficient virulence and quantity that exposure to the waste by a susceptible host could result in an infectious disease.”

How can “nonhazardous waste” and “infectious waste” be one and the same thing? Maybe Alice’s Humpty Dumpty is being employed at the state level. He makes words mean whatever he wants them to mean, and if they have to work a little harder, he just pays them more.

Transcript:
EnviroNews Reporter (ENR): You’re here on EnviroNews Utah with Amy Uchida, and what can you tell us about yourself? You’re a medical student, correct?

Amy Uchida: Yeah, I’m a fourth year medical student at the University of Utah.

ENR: And do you have a specialty or emphasis?

Amy: Yeah, I’m going to apply into internal medicine.

ENR: Were you at the town hall the other night?

Amy: I wasn’t.

ENR: In that town hall, we asked Stericycle point blank if they were incinerating prions, and what they said to us was quite shocking. They said that they were allowed to take prions and that they would have to notify the state to incinerate them. What’s your thought process on that as a medical student?

Amy: I can’t even… I can’t even comprehend how that… That doesn’t make any sense at all. That’s really… That makes me furious! I can’t believe that. And the state lets that happen.

TAGS
Air Pollution, DAQ, Department of Air Quality, DSHW, Emerson Urry, Environmental News, Hazardous Medical Waste, Medical Waste, Prion, Prions, Regg Olsen, Shad Engkilterra, Stericycle, Stericycle Medical Incinerator, U of U, University of Utah, University of Utah Medical School, Utah Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste