Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own.
By failing to cut ties with Baltimore’s Curtis Bay incinerator, local healthcare giant MedStar Health endangers the lives it has promised to protect.
Chances are that at some point in a Marylander’s life, they’ve interacted with MedStar Health through a hospital trip or primary practitioner appointment. As Maryland’s largest healthcare provider, MedStar operates hundreds of care locations in the area, including four hospitals in Baltimore. The company includes values such as integrity, innovation and respect in its mission statement — as any healthcare system should. MedStar also claims a commitment to its surrounding community, particularly to marginalized groups. I find fault with MedStar’s failure to implement these values.
MedStar contradicts its own mission statement through its continued relationship with Baltimore’s Curtis Bay incinerator. The incinerator burns medical waste from hospitals across the country and includes biohazardous material contaminated with bodily fluids or infectious diseases that can’t go into a landfill without sterilization.
The low-income, predominantly Black and Hispanic neighborhood of Curtis Bay in South Baltimore is no stranger to environmental pollution. A coal export terminal, the nation’s largest medical waste incinerator and numerous industrial factories are within close range — contaminating the air and water with toxic substances such as lead, carbon monoxide and mercury. These toxins take a toll: studies have shown that the Curtis Bay surrounding area has high rates of heart and respiratory disease.
In 2023, after being sued by Maryland prosecutors, Curtis Bay Energy, which owned the incinerator, pled guilty to forty counts, including insufficiently incinerating medical waste, concealing an illegal water discharge from inspectors and inadequately staffing the incinerator. The company received a $1.75 million fine for its improper management and endangerment of citizens. Even after this penalty, Curtis Bay didn’t clean up its act, and the violations have continued.
This March, the office of the Maryland Attorney General filed more complaints against the company, citing safety concerns such as fires and excessive emission levels of noxious gasses. These charges suggest that Curtis Bay Energy is untrustworthy and disregards public health. Furthermore, every few years, the incinerator’s operating company merges or rebrands as though to avoid accountability. The incinerator is still in operation under the management of Sharps Medical Waste Services.
Incineration at Curtis Bay is not MedStar’s only option, despite what they may claim. This spring, Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins University pledged to cut ties with Curtis Bay Energy and find alternative methods of sterilizing and disposing of medical waste. If the operators of the largest and top-ranked hospital in Maryland can adopt new ways, MedStar Health can too.
The good news is that eco-friendly solutions exist. MedStar could use autoclaves, which are chambers that use steam, temperature and pressure to sterilize contaminated materials. Once the process is done, the disinfected waste can be discarded into landfills. Hospitals often use these machines to sanitize medical instruments for reuse, so MedStar is likely familiar with them. Additionally, MedStar could use pyrolysis, a technique that uses extreme heat to break down any material that contains organic carbon — including plastic — to create an oil that can be reused as fuel.
A MedStar director claimed the company could work to reduce its trash production, according to Inside Climate News. But on the decision to keep using Curtis Bay Energy, that director said incineration was the only viable option for certain kinds of waste. While that may be true, it doesn’t have to be done at Curtis Bay — there are five other EPA-designated hospital, medical and infectious waste incinerators within a 200 mile radius of Baltimore.
Ultimately, the most advisable route for MedStar Health would be to reduce its waste production, use more eco-friendly waste disposal technologies whenever possible and, if absolutely necessary, send a minimal amount of waste to a more reputable hazardous waste incinerator. If MedStar wants to embody the values in its mission statement, it should commit to innovation by implementing new waste management methods.
If MedStar truly cared about health equity as claimed, then it would respect the wellbeing of Baltimore residents impacted by its own incinerated medical waste emissions, as well as the patients it serves directly. These changes would lead the healthcare company toward a path of real integrity.
Olive Beverly is a sophomore environmental science and policy major. She can be reached at obeverly@umd.edu.
