Medical Waste Disposal

Abstract

Medical (biomedical) wastes pose numerous potential health and safety hazards. In addition to their infectious and toxic characteristics, the highly variable and inconsistent nature of medical waste streams has increased public concern about storage, treatment, transportation, and ultimate disposal. In recent years, techniques have been developed to reduce human exposure to the toxic and infectious components of medical wastes. The most commonly used techniques include internal segregation, containment, and incineration. Other common techniques include grinding, shredding, and disinfection, e.g., autoclaving and chemical treatment followed by landfilling. Of all the available technologies for medical waste treatment and disposal, incineration has been found to be the most effective method overall for destroying infectious and toxic material, volume reduction, and weight reduction in the medical waste stream, incineration destroys the broadest variety of medical waste constituents and can recover energy from the medical waste stream. Incineration also is an appropriate alternative to burial of human pathological remains.