Medical waste constitutes one of the waste streams that should be dealt with special priority due to its potential negative impact on public health and on the environment. Incineration is a process that is widely used for the treatment of medical waste. However, self-supporting combustion of medical waste cannot avoid releasing many hazardous pollutants into our environment. The most favored so...

Dioxins (DXNs) in municipal waste incinerator fly ash were effectively reduced by pelletizing the mixture of ash, cement, and sodium phosphate and reburning the pellets in a laboratory scale bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) furnace. Three types of pellets--A, B and C, of various sizes and compositions were used in the experiments. The efficiency of DXN reduction in the pellet matrix was proportiona...

Treatment of municipal wastewater results worldwide in the production of large amounts of sewage sludge. The major part of the dry matter content of this sludge consists of nontoxic organic compounds, in general a combination of primary sludge and secondary (microbiological) sludge. The sludge also contains a substantial amount of inorganic material and a small amount of toxic components. There...

Part 1 is the first part in a series dealing with utilization of municipal solid waste �s an auxiliary fuel for utility class steam generators. It considers the resource characteristics of refuse as a fuel and the eco­ nomics of such use in comparison with conventional disposal techniques. The primary objective was to establish the impact such refuse use would have, if extensively practiced in ...

When a patient presents to hospital after a suicide attempt and appears to refuse treatment, clinicians should first assess if he or she should be treated under mental health legislation, regardless of competence to refuse treatment. When it is not possible or is inappropriate to treat under mental health legislation, the person's competence to refuse treatment should be assessed. If the patien...

The central problem in thinking about trust is that it can be misplaced: the trustworthy may be mistrusted, and the untrustworthy may be trusted. This potential mismatch leads to practical anxiety and intellectual complexity. I shall argue that normative inquiry and empirical work on trustworthiness are more useful than empirical work on trust for those who seek to place and refuse trust well, ...

Participants refusal to take part in research is an unpleasant experience that investigators face. This paper highlights some of the reasons why people from resource-poor settings refuse to take part in health research. This paper also highlights standards which investigators can adopt to avoid unnecessary refusals and at the same time ensure that individuals have the right to participate and f...