Study of emitted gases from incinerator of Al-Sadr hospital in Najaf city

Abstract

Medical waste incinerator of Al-Sadar hospital in Najaf city is one of the environmental pollution sources in the city due to reasons related to the quantity and quality of gases emitted from it, so this study aims to estimate environmental damage by determining the concentrations of some of these emitted gases. The study is concerned with determining the concentrations of six gases over five months (November 2013-March 2014), these gases were oxygen (O2), silane (SiH4), hydrogen (H2), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and hydrogen sulfide (H2S), in addition to studying some weather factors such as wind speed and temperature that affect on the concentrations of the gaseous pollutants. It is found that the study area suffers from pollution with SO2 gas, which is one of the main standard pollutants for assessing polluted areas, where the mean of gas concentration during the study period was 0.205 [ppm] and thus exceeded the permissible limits. Moreover, some of the studied gases (like NO2 and H2S) have concentration close to the upper limit of the standards, where NO2 gas concentration in December and January were 0.17 [ppm] and 0.2 [ppm], respectively, and H2S gas concentrations in February and March were 3.5 [ppm] and 4.4 [ppm], respectively, which poses a threat to public health and other elements of the environment, which confirms the existence of an air pollution problem that the study area and the nearby areas suffer from.