EPA's Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory initiated a study in 1988 to document what is known and what isn't known about medical waste treatment, particularly, in the area of medical waste inceration. The paper is to summarize the results of this study with regard to organic emissions. Highlights of the paper are as follows: (1) The majority of existing medical waste incerators do not have air pollution control equipment; (2) For the uncontrolled medical waste incerators, the dioxin and furan emissions per unit of waste incinerated are normally higher than those of hazardous and municipal waste inceration; and (3) The primary factors affecting the level of organic compounds in the emissions include the temperature, mixing and residence time inside the combustion chamber(s).