Though there are a raft of regulations that dictate the standards for clinical waste containment, from individual sacks and bins, through larger waste carts to road vehicles for the transfer of wastes from producer to treatment/disposal site, many of those vehicles are far from adequate and fail to comply with relevant regulations.

In the UK, Local Authorities frequently use vehicles that elsewhere would be considered unsuitable by virtue of their design and construction. Even waste management companies operate with vehicles that are far from ideal. Some are hopelessly deficient, proving inadequate or no containment, no seal of the base of the load compartment or smooth and snag-free internal surfaces, inadequate or non-existent security, no effective separation of the driver from wastes, and no separation of wastes from clean supplies.

Even worse, lease vehicles, when required, are used without any consideration of the next use of that vehicle, and are returned with just a cursory sweep with a yard brush. Of course, those lease vehicles are even less likely to meet the requirements of ADR.

Observation of most vehicle fleets will generally identify many deficiencies and this is another area in which the various regulatory agencies sharing or overlapping in responsibility for these matters are deficient in their supervisory role, and one for which we should expect support greater attention. The cause of, or at least the explanation for, the lack of attention to vehicle safety is generally cost but these deficiencies are mostly long-standing and there seems little real excuse.

In the US, the reaction on identifying a clinical waste vehicle leaking its contents, even slightly, is a full Hazmat response, a situation that will without doubt have the regulators ready to pounce and keep everyone on their toes.