Are you a Sharps Specialist?
Waste handlers and ancillary staff engaged in hygiene and waste management in and from healthcare premises perform an invaluable and essential task. The rewards are not great, yet the risks might […]
Waste handlers and ancillary staff engaged in hygiene and waste management in and from healthcare premises perform an invaluable and essential task. The rewards are not great, yet the risks might […]
Most communities show concern about discarded needles and other drug paraphernalia. It is quite understandable; drug litter is a clear sign of increasing social and economic decline, generally associated with […]
Safety sharps prevent sharps injuries. The evidence is clear, though whether this protection is due solely to better physical protection of staff or some additional subconscious increase in awareness and inherently […]
It seems that clinical wastes turn up in all sorts of places. Sharps are a particular problem when they arise, but tissue wastes are perhaps less common, except perhaps after […]
Several times recently, I have been asked what happens to unwanted needle and blade stocks, or for suggestions for cost-effective and environmentally sound disposal. The circumstances arise from introduction of […]
The producer pays principle is well known and well-established. However, when and how do payments arise? Householders pay for waste disposal though their community charge payments, now with addition levies […]
Safe in Common has issued a list of “10 Golden Rules” of safety relating to the design, implementation and use of safety sharps. The design and activation of the […]
An Australian lady faces a long and agonising wait for an all-clear after a needlestick injury from a hypodermic needle left in the mailbox outside her home in Hampton, Victoria. “[She] was […]
What’s new in sharps development? Obviously, the development and introduction of a vast array of safety engineered safety needles and blades is a huge advance, though perhaps the real advance […]
Local Authorities put lots of money into the creation and maintenance of parks and gardens, as public space for the enjoyment of all, and to keep kids entertained. The latter might […]
Having studiously ignored sharps injury for years, resisting all attempts to make sharps injury a mandatory reporting event under RIDDOR and so prompt investigation of ‘hot spots’ of poor sharps […]
Sharps bins come in an array of styles, sharps and sizes. But the Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, Devon, has need for an ever larger range of bins to disposal their frightening […]
Health Technical Memorandum 07-01: Safe management of healthcare waste has been updated (March 2013) and is now available on the Gov.UK website. Interesting perhaps that this ever more bloated document if […]
A quite unhelpful impasse has developed following a needle find outside a block of flats in Swansea. A “mountain” of 50 rubbish bags have been left to build up outside […]
It seems there is no end to the places that IV dug users will try to hide their needles and syringes, often placing others in danger of a sharps injury in […]
Three students at a Hobart primary school have been found pricking each other with a syringe they found outside a doctor’s surgery. The incident is the fourth in as many […]
Blenkharn Environmental have previously published the detail results of nationwide audits of clinical waste (including sharps) collections for domiciliary producers and of discarded drug litter by and on behalf of […]
Echoing in some part this report from US, a Dundee IV drug user placed Police officers at risk of sharps injury and infection when he failed to disclose he had an uncapped needle […]
Addiction to steroid drugs in Ireland is increasing, though those who take them don’t identify themselves as drug users. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/steroid-drug-use-on-the-increase-in-ireland-study-of-drug-users-in-dublin-has-found-1.1409012 Profiling more than 300 drug users who used services at […]
NHS Supply Chain has helped one of its suppliers cut packaging and transport costs by 63 per cent. It assisted a supplier of clinical waste containers to redesign the packaging of […]
Those who, despite our many warnings, dismiss the risk of Hepatitis C and other BBV infections from needles discarded by IV dug users (IVDUs) tend to ignore the statistics, of high […]
Safety sharps are being widely introduced in the UK, late, but better late than never. For establishments using fully automated safety needle and syringe devices that sheath or fully retract […]
I have long-favoured the quite common, though not universal, US approach that places sharps bins in publicly accessible locations to permit drop-off of used sharps by diabetics and others. In the absence […]
Nobody wants to fund collections of clinical waste from the community. Though some companies make a business out of ‘smalls’ it operates generally on small margins and yet is costly […]
The implementation of UK legislation to enable compliance with Council Directive 2010/32/EU is now in place and so many organisations are working hard to prepare guidance notes for healthcare providers. […]
Ireland has not been backward at making the most of EU laws and subsidies though it has now found itself in deep financial peril as a consequence. But less advantageous though […]
Non-consensual testing after needlestick injury is an increasingly important issue for many healthcare workers, and also for police, prison officers and others who have suffered a sharps injury with a needle from […]
There has been an increasing tendency in recent years to downplay the risks of acquiring bloodborne virus infection. Statistics are quoted, showing that in general the risks of acquiring a bloodborne […]
To promote safer injecting and to minimise harm Warwickshire’s Drug and Alcohol Action Team have developed new stickers for sharps boxes. The stickers have been designed to signpost people to […]
It is widely understood that laboratory wastes will be, or should be, autoclaved locally before removal for disposal. It stems from a statement by Chris Collins that “nothing should leave the laboratory unless […]