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Among the Deerfield Beach medical waste items that get produced by medical facilities, one that often needs a bit more attention than the rest are sharps. Sharps, such as needles or scalpels can be dangerous in more than one way and they need to be packaged accordingly.
- What is sharp waste?
The best way to describe this type of medical waste is to say that sharp waste are any items such as needles, syringes, blades, scalpels or similar that have the ability to lacerate or puncture human skin.
Since sharps are used most notably in diagnosing or treating patients, they often, in addition to being capable of physically injuring a person handling them, can also infect the said person if they are contaminated with the blood of sick patients.
In order to prevent that the person handling sharps waste is endangered in any way, both from injury or from infection, bio-hazardous medical waste management practice dictates that sharps waste are never disposed of with other waste in the bags. Just like they can puncture the skin, these instruments can, even more easily, pierce the medical waste bag. This can cause the ingredients within the bag to leak out and threaten people’s health or the atmosphere with infection and pollution.
Instead of putting sharps waste into standard medical waste bags, these items first need to be placed into special sharps containers. Medical waste management Deerfield Beach for this containers differs from state to state, but it is always necessary that they can be closed securely, that they are resistant to punctures and that they don’t leak.
Two Types of Sharps Containers
There are two kinds of sharps containers that can be used.
- Disposable sharps containers
- Reusable sharps containers
The first one are disposable containers. These have to be thrown away together with the sharps waste they hold.
The other type of sharps containers are reusable. Like their name suggests, these containers are meant for more than one use. They are usually emptied automatically (rarely is this done by human hand). Once the container is empty, it gets sterilized and is ready to be reused.
Where can You Buy Sharps Containers?
Albeit there are several online retailers out there that offer sharps containers made by different manufactures, a much better solution for the medical waste management Deerfield Beach of your hospital is to avoid these traders as you often can’t be sure about the quality of their containers.
A much better way to obtain sharps containers is via a licensed bio-hazardous waste management company that works in your area.
So, if you are running a medical care facility and have large amounts of sharps waste, remember that their proper disposal is one of the key elements of medical waste management Deerfield Beach. To know what type of container should you purchase, don’t forget to consult with the bio-hazardous medical waste management company that you hire or with the state and federal agency responsible for medical waste in your region.
