A Silver Lining

Arch Enterprises recycles X-ray film

Silver is indeed a precious metal. Besides its use in jewelry, silver has numerous industrial and medical applications, including X-ray film. “Silver is just a metal that can do lots of different things,” says Julie DiNatale, MS, national accounts manager for Arch Enterprises Inc. in Mexico, Mo. “They use it for antimicrobials; it makes images; it’s on mirrors. Silver’s everywhere, and being used more and more, even in your camping equipment, or in runner’s shoes and clothing.”

But there is a dark side to this otherwise shiny picture. For one thing, according to a 2003 U.S. Geological Survey study, there was a 3,000-metric ton deficit between the demand and production for silver worldwide at the beginning of the decade. Furthermore, as DiNatale notes, silver released into the environment in certain forms can be toxic to fish.

What Arch Enterprises Does

Occupying an 18,000-square foot facility in Mexico, Mo., about 110 miles northwest of St. Louis, 18-employee Arch Enterprises has been in the precious metals refining business since 1994.

“We focus our business on recycling silver, gold, platinum, palladium, rhodium, and other precious metals. The healthcare and X-ray business has been kind of the foundation. It’s where we started and the bulk of our material,” says DiNatale.

Serving the entire United States and Canada, Arch Enterprises also has customers in Mexico. DiNatale says the company provides onsite service to customers in an area that includes Missouri, Arkansas, Alabama, northern Florida, Illinois, and portions of neighboring states, such as Iowa.

DiNatale explains: “We do refine silver from industrial users, such as big manufacturers of products that are still silver-sensitive, like in imaging. We do refine catalysts from the chemical production industries. Those catalysts are silver-, gold-, or platinum-bearing and used sometimes in food production or other industrial processes. We refine materials from the plating industries that make plated items for automobiles, electronics, etc.” Additionally, Arch Enterprises refines medical silver from industrial scrap wound-care products, such as out-of-spec or excess material left over from production.

“We do also recycle gold, silver, platinum in the form of jewelry or tableware, dental gold, and we work primarily with sources that have quite a bit of that material routinely, but we will accept materials from consumers, as well,” DiNatale says.

Recycling X-ray Film

According to DiNatale, about one-fifth of the world’s silver usage is in X-ray film, so recycling this material is optimal for the environment, and she estimates that 65 percent of Arch Enterprises’ overall business comes from X-ray recycling. The company serves a range of healthcare facilities, including hospitals, independent imaging centers, chiropractors, and dentists. DiNatale says Arch Enterprises works with eight of the top 100 hospital groups in the country.

Film received at the facility in Mexico is subjected to heat, releasing the silver from the plastic. The residual material is placed into a smaller piece of refining equipment that produces molten silver. Ultimately, the silver is in a crystal or bar form of varying degrees of purity, for further use in industrial processes. DiNatale declines to identify who purchases the metal from Arch Enterprises. “It could be a company making coins or solutions for plating for electronics,” she says.

DiNatale says Arch Enterprises operates in compliance with all federal, state, and local environmental regulations and has appropriate pollution-control equipment. Since it is recycling metal, the facility is subject to, and meets the requirements of, the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Additionally, Arch Enterprises handles X-ray films in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) throughout the refining process. DiNatale explains that the material has to be handled quickly and kept under lock-and-key. Arch Enterprises issues its customers certificates to document the film has been properly destroyed.

Onsite Services

A variety of onsite services are available to help streamline the recycling process for customers. For instance, Arch Enterprises will transport film from facilities located in a number of nearby states.

About a year ago, the company also began providing a system to help facilities sort through and purge archived films. “We’ll send in a team of five to seven people. They’ll take a week and they literally sort through the records and they retain; they don’t pull what’s important to the hospital,” DiNatale says. “So if things are so many years old, and it needs to go, it just gives them a lot more space in the file room. And as things are headed toward electronic record-keeping, it just helps them utilize their facility better.” The films that are purged are brought back to Arch Enterprises’ facility for recycling.

According to DiNatale, there has been a good response to the purging service. “We’re keeping our crew busy, and we’ve been able to negotiate some service with some top hospitals in the area,” she says.

Future Prospects

DiNatale says Arch Enterprises also continues to service onsite silver recovery systems at hospitals that use wet chemistry for processing X-rays. However, she adds that this type of technology is being phased out as digital X-ray imaging becomes more prevalent.

“There is a downward trend in anything that can be done digitally,” DiNatale says. But she adds that even with the spread of digital imaging, the industry will continue to have records to purge for perhaps another 10 years. DiNatale says Arch Enterprises is looking to expand its onsite service area into Kansas and more of Iowa.

“Silver’s a very valuable metal. It’s a great resource that we have. It’s a metal that’s very expensive to obtain, and these X-rays also need to be destroyed in a HIPAA-compliant manner. So it’s just a win-win. You have a facility that can do certified destruction while recycling a precious resource. And we do pay hospitals for the resource. It does contain a precious resource,” says DiNatale.

| Mark D. Marotta is associate editor of rt image. Direct all questions and comments to mmarotta@rt-image.com.