Waste Management and Infectious Waste

Study Notes

Health care waste (HCW) includes all solid and liquid waste generated from:
- Diagnosis, treatment, or immunization of human beings
- Research pertaining to the above activities
- Research using laboratory animals for the improvement of human health
- Production or testing of biological products
- Other activities performed by an HCF (health care facility) defined as an institution that has health care as its core service, function, or business
HCW also includes waste from minor and scattered sources, such as waste produced in the course of health care undertaken in the home (e.g., home dialysis, self-administration of insulin, recuperative care)

Examples of infectious waste include:
- Cultures and stocks of infectious agents from laboratory work
- Wastes from surgeries and autopsies on patients with infectious diseases (e.g., tissues, materials or equipment that have been in contact with blood or other body fluids)
- Wastes from infected patients in isolation wards (e.g., excreta, dressings from infected or surgical wounds, clothes heavily soiled with human blood or other body fluids)
- Other instruments or materials that have been in contact with infected persons or animals

Classified separately especially when special methods of handling, treatment, and disposal are used
Includes tissues, organs, body parts, blood, body fluids, and other waste from surgery and autopsies, including human fetuses and animal carcasses
Recognizable human or animal body parts are also called anatomical waste

Refers to waste that may pose a variety of environmental and health risks
Examples include:
- Genotoxic waste
- Pharmaceutical wastes
- Cytotoxic waste
- Sharps waste

Highly hazardous and may have mutagenic, teratogenic, or carcinogenic properties
Disposal raises serious safety problems, both inside hospitals and after disposal
Causes damage to the cell’s DNA
Includes certain antineoplastic (anti-tumor) and cytotoxic (cell-killer) drugs