Biomedical Waste Disposal

This is the second edition of the WHO handbook on the safe, sustainable and affordable management of health-care waste--commonly known as "the Blue Book". The original Blue Book was a comprehensive publication used widely in health-care centers and government agencies to assist in the adoption of national guidance. It also provided support to committed medical directors and managers to make improvements and presented practical information on waste-management techniques for medical staff and waste workers. It has been more than ten years since the first edition of the Blue Book. During the intervening period, the requirements on generators of health-care wastes have evolved and new methods have become available. Consequently, WHO recognized that it was an appropriate time to update the original text. The purpose of the second edition is to expand and update the practical information in the original Blue Book. The new Blue Book is designed to continue to be a source of impartial health-care information and guidance on safe waste-management practices. The editors' intention has been to keep the best of the original publication and supplement it with the latest relevant information. The audience for the Blue Book has expanded. Initially, the publication was intended for those directly involved in the creation and handling of health-care wastes: medical staff, health-care facility directors, ancillary health workers, infection-control officers and waste workers. This is no longer the situation. A wider range of people and organizations now have an active interest in the safe management of health-care wastes: regulators, policy-makers, development organizations, voluntary groups, environmental bodies, environmental health practitioners, advisers, researchers and students. They should also find the new Blue Book of benefit to their activities. Chapters 2 and 3 explain the various types of waste produced from health-care facilities, their typical characteristics and the hazards these wastes pose to patients, staff and the general environment. Chapters 4 and 5 introduce the guiding regulatory principles for developing local or national approaches to tackling health-care waste management and transposing these into practical plans for regions and individual health-care facilities. Specific methods and technologies are described for waste minimization, segregation and treatment of health-care wastes in Chapters 6, 7 and 8. These chapters introduce the basic features of each technology and the operational and environmental characteristics required to be achieved, followed by information on the potential advantages and disadvantages of each system. To reflect concerns about the difficulties of handling health-care wastewaters, Chapter 9 is an expanded chapter with new guidance on the various sources of wastewater and wastewater treatment options for places not connected to central sewerage systems. Further chapters address issues on economics (Chapter 10), occupational safety (Chapter 11), hygiene and infection control (Chapter 12), and staff training and public awareness (Chapter 13). A wider range of information has been incorporated into this edition of the Blue Book, with the addition of two new chapters on health-care waste management in emergencies (Chapter 14) and an overview of the emerging issues of pandemics, drug-resistant pathogens, climate change and technology advances in medical techniques that will have to be accommodated by health-care waste systems in the future (Chapter 15).

The annual cost of medical care in the U niled States is rapidly approaching a trillion dollars. Without doubt, much of the rise in costs is due to our health industry's concentration on high technology remediation and risk avoidance measures. From recent public discussions it is becoming in creasingly evident that to contain the costs and at the same time extend the benefits of health care without national bankruptcy will necessitate much greater attention to preventative medicine. The total cost of waste disposal by our health industry is well over a billion dollars. It is rising rapidly as we increasingly rely on high technol ogy remediation measures. Here, too, in the opinion of the authors of this work, it would be prudent to give much greater attention to preventative approaches. Incineration technology has largely been developed for disposing mu nicipal solid waste (MSW) and hazardous waste (HW). As a result of the multibillion dollar funding for the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), most experts believe that pollution control is the key to minimizing toxic emissions from incinerators. This view is now beginning to take hold in medical waste (MW) incineration as well. However, the authors contributing to this book have concluded that precombustion measures can be most effective in reducing the toxic products of medical waste incineration.

Waste can be almost anything, including food, leaves, newspapers, bottles, construction debris, and chemicals from a factory, candy wrappers, disposable diapers, old cars, or radioactive materials. People have always produced waste, but as industry and technology have evolved and the human population has grown, waste management has become increasingly complex. Waste recycling involves the collection of waste materials and the separation and clean-up of those materials. Recycling waste means that fewer new products and consumables need to be produced, saving raw materials and reducing energy consumption. Waste reduction and recycling are very important elements of the local waste management framework. They help both to conserve natural resources and to reduce demand for valuable landfill space. The waste recycling services has become the one of the fastest growing industry. The growth of the waste recycling services is driven by the technology development for waste recycling. The waste management market is expected to be worth US$ 13.62 billion by 2025. Indian municipal solid waste (MSW) management market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.14% by 2025. India has planned to achieve a capacity of 2.9 million hospital beds by 2025 which will help bio medical waste management market to grow at a CAGR of 8.41%. The concern for bio medical waste management has been felt globally with the rise in infectious diseases and indiscriminate disposal of waste. It is to be understood that management of bio medical waste is an integral part of health care. There is a clear need for the current approach of waste disposal in India that is focussed on municipalities and uses high energy/high technology, to move more towards waste processing and waste recycling (that involves public private partnerships, aiming for eventual waste minimization driven at the community level, and using low energy/low technology resources. This book basically deals with characterization of Medical Waste, Medical Waste Data Collection Activities, Medical Waste Treatment Effectiveness, Gas Sterilization, Municipal Solid Waste, Bio-Medical Waste, Hospital Waste Incineration, Production, Use, and Disposal of Plastics and Plastic Products, Medical Waste Reuse, Recycling and Reduction, Disposal on Land, municipal and plastic waste management, Plastic Waste, incineration and number of recycling methods. The book is highly recommended to new entrepreneurs, existing units who wants to get more information of Waste Disposal & Recycling.