Body fluids leaking from waste bags
Nearly one in three bags containing human body parts taken during healthcare procedures have leaked on their way to disposal, a study at the Auckland City Hospital suggests. Auckland District […]
waste security
How safe are drugs waste while in your charge?
All clinical waste companies will receive pharmaceutical wastes in either small amount of larger quantities if serving hospitals offering a extensive pharmacy and drug manufacture/formulation services. Drug waste may be […]
US: Clinical waste containers fall from truck
In the early hours of Thursday morning, State and local Henrico County Police were called to a scene on Interstate 64 eastbound near the 195 mile marker in Henrico County. Virginia. […]
Heroin needle bins – What’s in a name?
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 […]
Patient confidentiality & recycling
The NHS is going green, slightly, in small, slow steps, but it IS going green. Many items are reused when it is safe to do so, with expensive disposables side lined […]
Hobart school kids share syringes to prick themselves
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 […]
Collecting used sharps from home users
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 […]
Publically accessible sharps disposal bins
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 […]
Laboratory wastes
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 […]
Pupils play with clinical wastes at Indian dump
Pupils of the Mandal Praja Parishad primary school at Achayyapeta have found some new “toys” to play with. During the recess and after school , the boys and girls run to the […]
Kids discover waste syringes on Long Beach, NY street
Children biking around their Long Beach, N.Y., neighbourhood discovered piles of used medical syringes Sunday, local news agency News12 reported. One of the children, age 12, told his parents, who […]
You can’t have it both ways
In a bizarre protest, local activists continue to voice their objections at area hospitals over the practice of trucking infectious medical waste through local communities to be treated at a remote […]
2010/32/EU – don’t use safety sharps?
In a surprisingly practical note to the The European Journal of Hospital Pharmacy: Science and Practice (EJHP) a UK pharmacist discusses the many situations occurring outside the immediate clinical environment where […]
Waste sector injury rate higher that reported
It has become apparent that the waste sector injury rate is actually higher than reported because of a data error by HSE; accident rates for 2011/12 were actually UP rather […]
A better waste sack?
Many companies seek to produce a better waste sack. It is a worthy goal, but one hampered by cost of development and the reality that a sack costing even 1p more […]
MRSA in water supply
Bit of a panic, mainly in the press at present, about an interesting paper in Environmental Health Perspectives entitled “Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Detected at Four U.S. Wastewater Treatment Plants”. As […]
Improving clinical waste disposal practice
How do we improve clinical waste disposal practice? The answer to this question is not so easy. There is the hugely bloated HTM 07-01 that seeks to instruct but not inform, […]
Microbiological hazards of clinical waste sacks
There is increasing concern about hygiene precautions in the clinical area, for the protection of patients, but in the occupational arena the message seems hard to get through. Infections associated […]
US clinical waste van stolen
Topeka (Kansas) police are investigating the theft of a van carrying bio-medical waste materials. Police were called to 3520 West 6th Friday morning on the theft. Through an electronic tracking app, […]
Needle exchange in prison
In Australia, the prison system has introduced needle exchange schemes to eliminate, as far as possible, the hazards to health of needle sharing among the prison population. Rates of Hepatitis […]
Waste drug theft did not pay
The last of four co-defendants was sentenced Monday to a year in federal custody for his role in a conspiracy to intercept and resell prescription painkillers slated for destruction as […]
Theft of drugs
We have many times reported on the theft of sharps bins for the drug waste that they contain, and on cases where healthcare staff and waste handlers had targeted these […]
Theft of sharps bin from hospital
“A young woman stole a sharps box from Hackettstown Regional Medical Center and removed needles and medications from it, police said. “On Aug 24 at about 4:53 am police were […]
Man steps on needle in Bournemouth Hospital car park
In an horrific twist on the now all-too-common tale of sharps injury to a member of the public coming into contact with a discarded needle, usually discarded drug litter, a Bournemouth […]
Exhuming landfilled clinical wastes
The recovery of identifiable clinical waste items including catheters and cannulae, medical device wrappers and fluid-filled tubing, syringes and needles when exhuming wastes from landfill sites is surprisingly common. From […]
Discarded needles on school premises
Finding discarded needles is a common occurrence on school premises. In the national audit of Local Authority approaches to the management of drug litter, to be published in July in CIWM Journal, […]
How do you take you coffee?
Coffee is an increasing popular drink, overtaking tea as the national drink. Coffee shops seem to be everywhere, with outlets in the high street, in book shops and libraries, in […]
Pharmaceutical waste from operating theatres and ITU
By analysing the pharmaceutical waste produced by eight operating rooms, an anaesthetist in New York found that discarded or wasted propofol made up 45% of all the drug waste. Future wastage […]
Clinical (medical) waste in Saskatoon landfill
Saskatoon is in the middle of nowhere – quite literally, it is located in the most central part of Canada and has few, if any, close neighbours. This makes a particularly […]
Ambulance company accused of dumping medical waste
The Capital District Ambulance Service is accused of dumping medical waste in abandoned ambulances. CBS6 has learned that DGS workers who were performing routine maintenance found bags of blood-soaked rags and dirty […]