The OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) is responsible for many aspects of regulation regarding Palm Beach medical waste disposal. These wastes are infectious or can cause physical injuries to human beings and because of this, and their adverse effect on the environment, they should not be disposed of with regular waste, nor sent to municipal landfills.
Medical wastes come as sharps (syringes, needles, scalpels…), blood and bodily fluids (such as urine, semen, vomit…), pathological wastes (human body parts, organs and tissue), animal waste (body parts, carcasses, organs, beddings, tissue and other biological wastes from animals) and laboratory or microbiological waste.
Apart from OSHA, a number of other federal and state health and waste institution are responsible for controlling medical waste disposal and how this waste is handled. These include EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), CDC (Center for Disease Control) and other.
Outsource or In-House Medical Waste Disposal
The biggest dilemma most generators of biohazardous waste have is whether they should outsource medical waste disposal to other companies, or should they do it in their own facilities. There are pros and cons of both of these approaches and it is really up to the management of the hospital to make this decision.
They will, of course, have to take into careful consideration the economic costs of buying necessary equipment for medical waste disposal, its maintenance, training for their personnel to use this equipment and a number of other things, if they intend to handle and destroy medical wastes on their own. For large hospitals, this approach is probably a good solution, as these often have their own incinerator machines for cremating amputated body parts and other pathological wastes, as well as large autoclaves for sterilizing sharps waste.
However, smaller clinics, nursery homes, dentist offices and such will find the financial burden of having their own medical waste disposal facility too much. As a viable alternative, they can use the services of professional medical waste management companies. These usually work on a contract basis, collecting medical waste from the health care facility when agreed upon (usually every week) and taking it to their plant for destruction.
What is OSHA’s Part In Medical Waste Disposal?
OSHA regulates medical waste disposal in a number of ways, but mainly focuses on the employee’s safety in the workplace. When it comes to medical wastes, this is very important as a lot of these can both cause physical injuries and dangerous (sometimes life-threatening infections).
Much of this danger comes from sharps waste. OSHA therefore demands that all used needles and such are promptly discarded in available sharps containers, as a part of the facility’s necessary Palm Beach medical waste disposal activities.
