Disposal of Bio-Medical Waste

Each country has its own rules / code to comply with. Although it may be very similar there are differences.

Where are you from?

There are many different regulations and rules for each location. Follow your local standards. Unfortunately most of the time irrational public opinion trumps educated opinions in setting the standards but they still must be followed.

I prefer the use of on site incineration for biomedical waste, with temperature monitor circuitry that guarantees operation above a critical temperature. This does mean many small furnaces that must be maintained instead of one massive furnace remotely located. But I feel the idea of transporting biomedical waste is just asking for a problem to happen.

I agree 100%.

The less you carry the stuff, the lower the risk of accidents.

Also, new plasma furnaces are becoming available that turn anything into a syngas and minerals. Even the nasty bugs any lab can come up with...

I agree with MARCOT. The plasma gasification systems can handle nearly any medical/research bio waste. They can even generate power to offset the cost in about ten years. There is a horrible medical dump near ORO Arizona that has ruined the local water supply. One of these systems should be placed there to get rid of the nuisance and stop the long-term contamination.

I totally agree with the use of incineration to burn medical wastes as per the HTM( Health Technical Memorandum )Standards. Modern incinerators use latest technique and make the ash handling of incineration is easier. Here in Oman incinerator is mostly used for disposing medical wastes.

The accepted procedure here is to place it in a Viking longboat, push it off from shore and set it afire with flaming arrows from the shore. The tourists just love it.

Good catch about the possible radioactive material.

One thing to be aware of is standards a Certifying organization may have. When we are going through the Certification process they look closely at what has been picked up, by whom and where it was destroyed. They make sure loading logs and manifests match etc.

We have dealt with some companies who have incinerated the waste and also with a company that shreds it all and treats it with chemicals to make it non-hazardous. It can then be discarded as trash.

Autoclaved in this area..... incineration is a no no..... which leads to.... we send our yellow waste to Kansas city to be incinerated (not in our back yards). Related to St Louis's past experience of soot choked skys in the last century(19th).

Thank you all at CR4 for your feedback and may you all have a happy and prosperous 2011. Your inputs will help in our anticipated upgrading of incineration equipment. We currently use incineration and a limited autoclaving and in need of upgrading our current incinerator (or replace with current alternatives). There seems to be no alternatives to incineration and the jury still supports incineration for our type of work.