From: Ian blenkharn@ianblenkharn.com
Category: News & information
Date: 29 Jul 2008
Time: 15:17:35 +0200
Remote Name: 86.133.234.230
An interesting tale of mortuary staff from US, faced with local disposal regulations that prohibit the discharge of bloodstained fluids from to foul sewer. The rule says its hazardous, but from the news report, the risk seems to be minimal and the fluid is fully contained in a tank.
Interestingly, the report includes a comment from a mortuary manager who explains that the extent of exposure of their own staff is 10 times greater but they are OK, so what's the problem? She said the chances of exposure to waste from the morgue was "minuscule" but understood the difference it could make to just one family that became exposed. She added, however, that it is hardly different from what residents do every day.
"Say somebody gets sick at home. Say they have liver disease," she said. "They throw up two litres of blood into their toilet. What do they do? They flush it and it goes into the sewer. No different than what we are doing at the autopsy table. Blood and body fluids are going into our sewer system every minute.
[more]
An interesting proposition, and one that really does put this into context. Personally, I would consider also the relative impact of faeces entering the sewage system. That really does compare badly with individually small volumes of blood and other body fluids.
But rules are rules, and in this case I would side with the regulators.