A proposed smoke stack will improve, not erode, the air quality around the Island's only medical hospital, officials claim.

Concerned area residents last night jammed a conference room at the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for a meeting with hospital management over controversial building plans.

But officials insisted that a proposed 87-foot smoke stack will not cause pollution problems -- instead it will help solve them.

Berry Hill and Point Finger Road residents were told that the hospital's three, 40-foot smoke stacks will be replaced by a taller single stack that will spew less pollutants into the air.

The smoke stack is part of a Central Utility Plant that the hospital wants to build next to the nurses' residence on Berry Hill Road.

Officials last night predicted that in a "worst case scenario'', only 254.41 mg/m3 of pollutants will spew into the air in an hour. The legal limit in Bermuda is 450 mg/m3 in one hour.

They added that the new stack will comply with all Government regulations and will improve the air quality in the area since the taller stack will better disperse pollutants into the air.

At the moment residents are plagued by emissions, from the incinerator, which end up on the roofs.

Officials said the present pollution problem was the result of a down draft.

They promised that the new, taller stack will all but eliminate that problem.

The hospital's also proposes to build a bio-oxidation unit to replace the current incinerator and will burn human, plastic and other types of waste.

Officials insisted that the unit will "hardly'' produce any pollutants.

And residents were told that noise pollution, which currently comes from a cooling tower on the fifth floor of the hospital, will be eliminated since new chillers will be built in the plant and the noisy tower will be taken down.

Last month, a group of 15 Berry Hill Road residents lodged an objection against the hospital's plan to build the smoke stack.