Most, perhaps almost all, clinical waste companies are using handheld data terminals to record customer collections. These devices have many advantages, but what about hygiene?

Data terminals may be carried in a pocket but more likely are rather bulky and will be carried in the operatives hands. This is certainly the case when in use, and one must wonder if the device is laid down on some soiled surface while at the customers’ premises.

Every touch screen or keyboard operated device is at risk of contamination from soiled hands or worse, from gloved hands when used without glove removal.

At the customers’ premises the device may be carried into an office, to the surgery or clinic, and may be handed to a customer representative to obtain a signature.

Once collection is complete, the device and probably the gloves too are then taken back into the driver’s cab to sit on a seat of on the dashboard, and may later be taken into the office once back at base.

The potential spread of micro-organisms may not be a particularly great risk but most certainly it must exist, largely as part of general hygiene deficiencies among waste handlers.

Blenkharn Environmental managed to get access on Monday to two such data terminals carried by waste collection drivers. Each wash swabbed with a moistened cotton tipped swab. Those cultures were processed and this morning the results have caused some concern. Both terminals grew large numbers of mainly Gram negative bacteria, predominantly Escherichia coli and fewer Pseudomonas aeruginosa among others, with Staphylococcus aureus and coagulase negative staphylococci and aerobic spore-bearing bacilli among a diverse mix of Gram positives.

Perhaps the results, as yet provisional, should be of concern though this is a very small sample and may not be fully representative. In all probability, the flora of these data terminals may represent the flora picked up on the gloved hands of a waste handler on that day only. It ma thus be highly variable from terminal to terminal and from day to day.

That aside, there is a risk. The contamination is indicative of the contamination carried on the gloves, and probably on the hands of drivers, taken into the vehicle cab, office, and into customer premises. Contamination will be transferred to every hand surface on which the terminal is placed, and to the hands of others who are asked to sign for a collection.

That is not good. It is probably not cause for immediate action, but demonstrates poor hygiene conditions that could be improved. Hand washing, by staff and by customers would be a reasonably precaution and preventative measure though hand washing is often woefully poor. Take care where terminals are placed, and consider an office where staff may download many of these devices and then change their battery for use the next day as a contaminated area not suitable for eating biscuits and drinking tea.

Workwear and hand hygiene for waste handlers has been a concern for several years and is the subject of on-going research and investigation by Blenkharn Environmental. The Clinical Waste Discussion Forum and its archive files contain much additional information on the subject.