Health Care & Medical

How To Dispose General Medical Waste Safely?

With blooming health care sector nationally and globally, the question of how to dispose the medical waste safely repeats itself. Luckily, nowadays things are a lot easier, you can look into ewmdumpsterrental.com as an example of a good service, that can help take your garbage where it needs to go. All you have to do is put it within a specified dumpster. The medical wastes are categorized into any of the following before disposal

  1. General Medical Waste
    1. It
      is not hazardous
    1. It
      contributes the major share of the medical waste
    1. It
      includes plastics, papers, office wastes that do not require special handling.
  2. Infectious Medical
    Waste

    1. As
      the name suggests it possess risk to living beings. It includes bloody
      bandages, cotton, surgical wastes, human body parts removed after surgery,
      swabs.
    1. The
      disposal of these wastes are governed by set of rules as decided by the
      government of the state
  3. Hazardous Medical Waste
    1. These
      wastes are not infectious but are dangerous
    1. It
      includes chemotherapy agents, solvents, chemicals, etc.
  4. Radioactive Medical
    Waste

    1. As
      the name suggests these wastes contain radioactive material in them
    1. It includes thallium
      stress tests, nuclear medicines to treat cancer, etc. These waste materials
      should be sealed and disposed according to the government compliance.

The
medical wastes are now ready for disposal. Here is a complete guide on how to
dispose medical waste safely. One can visit centres of medical waste disposal Los Angeles for
more details.

Stage 1 – Collection And
Segregation

  • Collect the medical
    wastes in separate containers. These should be strong and do not break while
    handling
  • Keep the sharp needles,
    syringes and the contaminated tools used in patient’s treatment separately.
    This is done to avoid the infectious waste from mixing with the other general
    waste disposal
  • Segregate the liquid
    and solid waste separately
  • Collect the waste on
    their respective bags. For instance red colour bags are used for sharp
    containers. The segregation based on colours is as follows

    • Red
      Colour Bag –       Sharp objects like needles, razors,
      blades, staples, trocars, wires, ampules etc.
    • Blue
      Colour Bag –       Infectious waste like blood, urine
      samples, IV tubes, cultures, contaminated PPE, etc
    • Yellow
      Colour Bag –       Radioactive wastes like empty
      syringes, empty ampules, gowns, tubes, wipes, empty IVs, packaging, etc.

Stage 2 – Store And
Transport

  • Select a secured area
    for storing the wastes. It should be inaccessible to public, areas of food
    consumption
  • Store the waste in the
    refrigerator if required.
  • Observe the wastes
    periodically to prevent the infections being transmitted.

Stage 3 – Treatment

There
are 2 ways of treatment involved in treating the medical waste namely

  • Incineration systems –
    It includes treating pathological waste and pharmaceutical wastes
  • Non – incineration
    system – This includes the following types

    • Thermal  treatment– Autoclaving – used for sharp wastes
      and infectious wastes
    • Irradiative treatment –
      Microwave – used for sharp and infectious wastes
    • Chemical treatment– Chemical
      and liquid waste generated from laboratory.
    • Biological treatment –
      enzymes – Still undeveloped

Processing The Medical Waste

In order to reduce the hazards, the wastes are properly collected and processed. It includes carting, conveyors, sterilizing, pre – crushers, deliquefying, baler, etc

In
order to learn more visit a medical waste disposal Los Angeles