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If you are employed in a hospital, dental office, private doctor’s practice, veterinary office or maybe a tattoo parlor, you are likely dealing with great amounts of medical waste disposal Weston on a daily basis and are perhaps not entirely sure what to do with them and how to dispose of them in the right manner.
Medical waste material and its management is regulated by the state or federal laws to make sure that we all do our part in its correct disposal. This is an important issue as these types of refuse can be contaminated and infectious and therefore pose a considerably greater hazard to the public health and the environment if they are not managed in the right way.
Regulation of medical waste disposal falls on a number of bodies. Usually, as the material is more hazardous, it is the federal government that is more involved in regulating its treatment and removal. Therefore, health care facilities and their management can be severely fined if they fail to dispose of their medical waste as regulations require.
History of EPA’s Medical Waste Management Operations
One of the bodies that holds the greatest importance when it comes to these regulations is the EPA, or Environmental Protection Agency. Their real work on medical waste starts in 1988, when the US Congress issued the MWTA (Medical Waste Tracking Act). The reason for this is that great amounts of this kind of waste were being found washing up on several East coast beaches. The EPA was required by this act to make a tracking system for medical waste and to create standards for how it should be separated from other types of trash, packaged and labeled. The act lasted 11 years, with great success, until it was finally shut down in 1999.
EPA made a number of useful studies, whose goal was to find the best way to deal with medical waste. In their studies, they tested several established methods and technologies of waste disposal, including:
• Incineration
• Microwaves
• Various chemicals
• Different mechanical systems
The goal was to find the technology that produces the least amount of contamination and is therefore safer for handling.
Incineration as a Medical Waste Disposal Method
At this point, the majority of medical waste in United States (90%) is destroyed using this method. This, of course, lead the EPA to create several very strict guidelines to ensure their best use. One of these include a set of air emission guidelines with the purpose of making sure that incinerators do not pollute the air. Other standards also ensure greater control over mercury, hydrogen chloride or dioxin emissions, among others.
Of course, incineration is not the sole way for medical waste disposal Weston. New EPA standards for incinerators greatly increase their cost, so health care facilities are scrambling to find a better alternative. This is best left to a team of qualified professionals in the medical waste disposal industry. Give us a call now to get a free quote.
