What is Regulated Medical Waste?
Regulated medical waste, or simply RMW is also known as infectious medical waste and biohazardous medical waste. This includes medical waste that has been exposed and contaminated by blood, body fluids or some other infectious or potentially infectious material. As such, RMW can be a great risk when it comes to transmitting infections.
RMW can be divided into several categories, with each of these categories requiring special medical waste removal. In most US states, the proper medical waste management Boca Raton procedure is to first make RMW non-infectious so it can be disposed of as solid waste.
RMW is only found in health care industry, but even so poses a number of challenges for the medical waste management handlers. First of all, most regulations on RMW are defined on a federal or state level, so anyone who handles it should know them in advance.
Medical Waste Management Regulations: Past
In the past, medical waste management was regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This federal US agency used treated medical waste in the manner alike to other forms of environmental hazards, such as solid waste or emissions.
However, later on, the framework for medical waste stated differing from the one used for other types of wastes and was left in the discretion of individual states much more.
On incident that changed that (actually several of them) was when in the 1980s, used and disposed sharps were found floating along the East Cast of the United States. This prompted the Congress to introduce the Medical Waste Tracking Act. The MWTA demanded that EPA creates a 2-year medical waste management program.
Medical Waste Management Regulations: Present
Today, EPA no longer plays such an important and central role in medical waste removal regulations and has delegated much of that responsibility to different federal agencies and individual states.
Take a look at a brief summary of medical waste management regulations today:
1. OSHA Regulations – Occupational Safety and Health Administration oversees management of sharps waste, container requirements, labeling and medical waste removal employee training. OSHA regulations are meant to protect medical workers from exposure to blood-borne pathogens.
2. DOT Regulations – Department of Transpiration applies to the shipping and transportation of medical wastes. These apply to vehicles used to haul medical waste from the facility where they were produced to the medical waste removal plant.
3. EPA Regulations – Environmental Protection Agency still regulates a portion of medical waste management., particularly when it comes to medical waste incinerators (emissions) and the requirements that fall under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)
4. CDC Regulations – The role of Center for Disease Control is to provide guidelines for infection control
5. State Regulations – Almost all of the 50 US states are regulating medical waste at some level. However, there are a lot of differences. For example, many states have designed their medical waste management Boca Raton laws based on the Medical Waste Tracking Act, but other states have chosen to ignore this act in making their medical waste laws.
