Peter Kelly
CEO, Pharmafilter
An on-site treatment solution decontaminates hospital wastewater — a key channel for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) — before antibiotics and harmful pathogens find their way into the natural environment.
If it wasn’t for the antibiotics administered in hospitals, patients could die from routine surgeries and common illnesses. Yet, ironically, the ubiquity of antibiotic treatment in hospitals is precisely why they have become hotspots for microbial contamination, explains Peter Kelly, CEO of Pharmafilter.
“The pharmaceuticals and antimicrobials administered in hospitals are so powerful that patients can only metabolise 20% of them,” says Kelly. “The rest is unmetabolised and therefore present in the urine and faeces in hospital wastewater. If this contaminated wastewater is allowed to travel downstream to a treatment plant, it becomes a key channel for AMR.”
Revolutionising management of hospital waste and wastewater
Wastewater treatment plants are not equipped to remove local pharmaceuticals from hospital effluent and can be ideal breeding grounds for AMR. There is an upstream automated treatment solution, devised by Pharmafilter, which Kelly believes will revolutionise how hospital waste and wastewater are managed. “A hospital can mitigate the impact of antimicrobial resistant bacteria if it installs an on-site solution to decontaminate waste and purify wastewater at its source, and so remove any toxic elements making their way into the wastewater stream,” he says.
The way hospital waste
and wastewater are managed
must change urgently.
The solution is easy to set up and involves deployment of intelligent shredders in a hospital’s sluice room. These machines shred waste — including risk waste, sharps, food waste, disposable bedpans and urinals and PPE — which is transported via the existing sewer network or a dedicated pipeline to a waste and wastewater treatment plant in the hospital grounds.
Arresting the cycle of contamination poisoning the natural environment
“Solids and liquids are then separated,” says Kelly. Wastewater, meanwhile, is treated to remove the last trace of pharmaceuticals, contaminants, antibiotics, cytotoxins and harmful pathogens before they find their way into our water, soil and air.” Pharmafilter wants to understand if captured contaminated wastewater could be of value to researchers and lead to development of new medicines and treatments.
The way hospital waste and wastewater are managed must change urgently, insists Kelly, revealing that his company’s solution is being rolled out across Ireland, the UK and other European countries. “The relentless cycle of contamination coming from hospitals is poisoning the natural environment and leading to serious health problems such as respiratory illnesses, heart disease, cancer and AMR,” he says. “To arrest it, we need proven technology that is clinically, operationally and financially viable for hospitals.”
