Any waste that contains amounts of infectious or potentially infectious materials in substances, over a certain allowed limit, is considered to be biohazardous and has to be dealt with using proper Palm Beach medical waste removal means.
A full list of biohazardous substances would be too long to be covered in this short article, but it includes blood, body fluids, used needles and other sharps, body parts and organs, certain laboratory waste. Basically, anything that has been contaminated by blood or some other biological can be considered as “biohazardous waste” and has to be disposed of as such.
There are, of course, different types of biohazardous waste and they often have to be disposed of separately. For example, sharps (needles, scalpels and other medical instruments used to lacerate or pierce the patient’s skin for treatment or diagnosis) need to be discarded not in red plastic bags, like the other solid biohazardous wastes, but in special, hard plastic, sharps containers. These receptacles are specially designed so that needles and such can be put in safely, without reaching with your hand inside. These need to include safe-locking lids and should be labeled with a biohazard sign and the words “Biohazardous Waste” on all sides of the container.
Other biohazardous wastes, like we already mentioned, are disposed of in plastic bags. These are similar to the trash bags we all use at our homes, but while those are green (for bio-degredables, such as food leftovers), clear (for recyclables), or black (for non-biodegradables), biohazard waste bags are red.
How are Red Bags Used for Medical Waste Removal?
Red bags for medical waste can be bought from disposal companies or local vendors. You can probably find some in the local hyper market. If not, try your local health or waste departments. Maybe you will have better luck there.
Keep your red bags inside a larger, usually plastic container that has a cover or sealing lid. Again, you can get these, if you don’t have them, from local health and waste departments.
Use the red bags only for medical waste. Nothing else, such as regular waste, should be placed inside these bags. This is because biohazardous and regular wastes should not be mixed. Also, like we mentioned earlier in this article, used needles and other sharps should also be disposed of in another container and not the plastic bag, or they could tear it open.
When disposing waste in the red bag, make sure that you stop before you overfill it. Only fill the bag to about a ¾ of its total capacity. Why? So you can safely tie it up. To tie the biohazard waste bag, grab the “neck” of it and tie it into a knot. Check if it can support the weight of the contents inside and that it doesn’t leak and you are good to call your medical waste management company to come and “pick up the trash”.
Finally, we hope you have been making records and monitored your infectious waste from the moment your facility has produced it to the moment it is destroyed (you should receive a destruction manifest from the Palm Beach medical waste removal company.
