Healthcare Waste Management: Types and Disposal
Healthcare Waste: Concept, Importance, and Classification
Definition: Healthcare waste encompasses all solid, liquid, or gaseous waste generated in a healthcare facility. This includes facilities where activities related to human healthcare take place, such as patient care, analysis, research, teaching, and the procurement and handling of biological products.
Classification of Healthcare Waste
General Waste
General waste does not pose a specific pollution risk. It is generated in areas where healthcare activities are not directly carried out (e.g., offices, warehouses, and mess halls).
Elimination: Similar to municipal solid waste.
- Non-recyclable general waste: Produced in areas without healthcare activity (use black bags/sacks).
- Recyclable general waste: Cardboard, paper, glass, plastics, and organic waste.
Sanitary Waste (Plant Protection Waste)
This type of waste is specific to healthcare activities and is potentially infectious. It is further categorized as follows:
- Waste Similar to Urban Waste: Disposed of like municipal solid waste, although recycling is not recommended. Includes materials such as dressings, gauze, bandages, single-use syringes and surgical materials, diapers, soiled textiles, gloves, plasters, catheters, drainage tubes, drainage bags, perfusion systems, and dialysis materials (use green bags/sacks).
- Special Sanitary Waste (RBE):
- Sharps and Puncturing Objects: Used in healthcare activities (e.g., needles, scalpels).
- Cultures and Stocks of Infectious Agents: Petri dishes, blood cultures, liquid extracts, broths, etc.
- Waste from Patients with Highly Virulent, Eradicated, Imported, or Very Low Incidence Diseases: Includes any residue that has come into contact with patients infected with diseases such as viral hemorrhagic fever, herpesvirus simiae, rabies, anthrax, brucellosis, glanders, melioidosis, diphtheria, tularemia, and leprosy.
- Waste from Patients with Airborne Infections: Such as tuberculosis and Q fever.
- Waste from Patients with Oral-Fecal Transmission Infections: Such as cholera, bacillary dysentery, amoebic dysentery, typhoid, and paratyphoid fever.
- Filters Used in Dialysis for Patients with Bloodborne Pathogen Infections: Hepatitis B and C, and HIV.
- Infectious Animal Waste.
- Waste from Patients with Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease: Requires incineration.
- Substantial Amounts of Body Fluids (Especially Blood): Greater than 100ml.
- Minor Human Body Parts: Remains of organs, placenta, and others.
- Chemical Waste: Must be eliminated according to regulation 833/1988. Includes chemical products or materials contaminated with liquids (e.g., alcohol, formalin, xylene, dyes – use labeled 20L jugs), pathological specimens in formalin (use labeled blue containers), waste oil (use labeled bottles), toner cartridges (from printers, photocopiers – use specifically labeled containers), and batteries (use specifically labeled containers).
- Cytostatic Waste: Hazardous due to carcinogenic and mutagenic properties. Requires incineration. Use specific blue-labeled containers.
- Radioactive Waste: Any material or product contaminated with radioactive materials that emits radiation. Evacuation is the responsibility of Enresa.
- Human Anatomical Waste: Corpses and human remains of sufficient entity. Subject to Mortuary Health Police regulations: burial or cremation.