Fresh concerns over disposal of face masks

RUTENDO RORI

The Environmental Management Agency (EMA) has raised concern over the indiscriminate disposal of face masks, one of the protective measures  against the deadly Covid-19 people now use following government’s  directive for its mandatory use in public places.

Many people have been disposing  used face masks  on the streets, a move which has resulted in widespread contamination of the terrestrial, atmospheric and aquatic environments.

There are fresh concerns  that some of the face masks are left in places where children pick them up and use them or play with them.

EMA’s education and publicity manager, Amkela Sidange told Business Times the agency was worried  by the hazards of improperly disposed surgical masks.

EMA has since engaged the Ministry of Health and Child Care and came up with standard operating procedures of Covid-19 waste, precisely the safe disposal of surgical masks.

“When Covid-19 hit, as an agency, we quickly made some projections saying if everyone is to put on facemasks in this country, how much of these face masks will be disposed into the environment on a daily basis? “Our projection gave us about 4m masks to be disposed into the environment,” Sidange said.

“After this projection, we had to come up with a quick way to try and avoid a potential ecological and health disaster. Hence, we engaged the Health and Childcare Ministry and we quickly came up with standard operating procedures of Covid-19 waste at household level as well as in schools, retail outlets, toll gates, airports.”

She said EMA’s main worry was at household level as people were discarding and this was likely to contaminate litre pickers and some people were now picking up those masks, rewashing them before reusing them.

“So this procedure was specifically highlighting that at household level, a user can take the mask, wash it under running water with soap for 20 seconds, then cut it into tiny pieces using a pair of scissors, to try and discourage those who were reusing the masks, put in a separate paper, and throw in the bin,” Sidange said, warning those indiscriminately disposing of face masks that they were liable to prosecution.

Section 83 of the Environmental Management Act prohibits littering.

EMA has rolled out awareness campaigns.

“We are also doing information dissemination to the public on the standard operating procedures. We even had the Zimbabwe Sunshine  group in Harare that got funding from UNDP to unpack those guidelines and they really moved around Harare disseminating information to the people and at the same time as EMA, we made use of mainstream and social media,” Sidange said.

Plastic pollution has been identified as a growing environmental and public health challenge. However, the magnitude of this problem and the call for measures to address the worsening plastic pollution crises have grown only lately to a higher level of public consciousness, especially since the inception of the Covid-19 pandemic.

There are suggestions that the  disposal of contaminated PPEs should be meticulously handled by trained waste collectors and rightly bagged, discarded or recycled to prevent infection and associated health risks, environmental pollution.