The weather has been topsy-turvey for a few years now and the predictions, or should that be the expectations, are that the trend will continue. While winters may be wetter and somewhat unpredictable with periods of heavy snow and ice summers are thought to become increasingly hotter for longer.

Though we have avoided until now the refrigeration of even the most odiferous of clinical wastes, perhaps in the hottest summer months this will a become more consideration than previously.

Sanitary and offensive wastes are generally yet more problematic, since the offensive property is almost always odour. Bulk commercial collections may need refrigeration, or at least some modest degree of cooling to reduce the nuisance due to odour. This may be required at the producer premises – nursing homes and the like – and though the energy demand may be costly portable electric cooler units may need some thought now before an even more costly stopgap is required.

The need will be ever greater for those domiciliary patients producing quantities of sanitary/offensive wastes in their own homes. As local authorities dodge the additional expense of separate collections and require community patients to put this waste into the black bag domestic waste stream there will be an increasing number of patients embarrassed and distressed by the odour from these wastes stacked up at home in the warmest of weathers, and ever more so as fortnightly collections are implemented to reduce service levels and minimise expenditure.

For these patients, refrigeration is unlikely to suffice as space and cost will make this almost impossible. A weekly collection would help return standards to an acceptable level but somehow I anticipate that their distress will be ignored and their needs left unmet.