BEIJING — China faces a new problem with the tainted milk that has sickened babies and battered public confidence: How to get rid of the toxic stuff.
It has been burned, buried and mixed into coal. One trash-hauling company dumped a load into a river, turning the waters a frothy white and raising fears about the safety of the drinking water.
Tens of thousands of tons of milk laced with melamine, a chemical used in making fertilizer and plastics, have been pulled from shelves and warehouses since September, and local governments face the huge — and costly — problem of safely disposing of it.
The Health Ministry has not released a total figure for the amount of impure dairy products recalled or said how much has been destroyed.
But last month alone, more than 32,000 tons — enough to fill about 23 Olympic-size pools — were disposed of in a single province, Hebei, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
At a factory in the southern city of Guangzhou, tons of contaminated milk powder were incinerated in 3,000-degree heat.
“All the remaining substance will be put into cement,” said Wang Fan, director of Guangzhou’s food safety office. “I can guarantee that our disposal process meets the national environmental protection requirements. It will not harm people’s health.”
Not known for making environmental safety a priority, China has gotten generally good marks so far from scientists and environmentalists in its efforts to dispose of the adulterated milk.
With confidence in the government’s food-safety standards battered by the scandal, Beijing has issued new guidelines on how to destroy the tainted products. They recommend burning the milk in large-capacity incinerators or, if such facilities aren’t available, burying small amounts in landfills — as long as local environmental bureaus approve.
Burning or burying breaks down melamine and neutralizes its toxicity, said Peter Ben Embarek, a Geneva-based scientist at the World Health Organization’s food-safety department.
