New Program Reduces Chemotherapy Bio-Waste
It’s not exactly dumpster diving, but it’s close, and it’s working. A waste sorting procedure started last year has reduced hazardous bio-waste collection from chemotherapy activities at the University Campus by 59 percent. The new approach cuts disposal costs, increases awareness of waste-handling practices and results in a more accurate waste stream leaving the campus— all important sustainability objectives.
In 2008 the campus accumulated and disposed of 2,608 pounds of chemotherapy-related hazardous bio-waste; in 2009, however, that number fell to 1,055 pounds because the new sorting process removed non-hazardous items. “We want to be sure that what we’re sending out as hazardous waste is actually hazardous waste,” said Jo-Ann Ranslow, chemical and laboratory safety officer in the Medical School’s Environmental Health & Safety Department, who oversees the chemo-waste sorting initiative.
The new process begins in the clinics where by-products of chemotherapy treatments such as gloves, masks, tubing and used medication vials are placed into yellow waste receptacles, which are then brought to a centralized accumulation area designated for hazardous materials. Eventually, a technician carefully spreads the waste onto a table and separates it by hand, removing materials that are considered non-hazardous because they have either no, or just trace, pharmaceutical residue.
Disposing of hazardous bio-waste is more expensive than standard medical waste, so the new sorting process is a “nice check and balance,” Ranslow said. “The end points of these waste streams are important,” she added. “Non-regulated solid waste typically is brought to landfills or an incinerator. Regulated medical waste, such as body fluids and gauze pads, goes to an incinerator that meets certain burn temperatures and has smokestack scrubbers to reduce emissions. Hazardous waste goes to an incinerator with even higher burn temperatures, faster times getting to those temperatures and a greater number of scrubbers.”
Furthermore, Ranslow said sometimes the technicians find another kind of danger on the sorting table: needles and objects with jagged edges, which are not supposed to be there at all. When that happens, “we go back to the source and educate them about putting those materials into a special ‘sharps’ container,” she said.
Given the success of the sorting program for chemotherapy waste, Ranslow said the process has been expanded for 2010 to include all other hazardous pharmaceutical wastes on campus.