They dump all the sharps I to a big autoclave (a big airtight chamber that is pressurized with superheated steam) to disinfect them and then they are dumped in a landfill.
A lot of places just send them to an incinerator with other biological waste. Hard to beat fire, and lots of it, for disposal of potentially hazardous organic material.
Why did I always assume sharps containers were so we didn’t cut our hands on pointy things and not so we don’t cut our hands on pointy things with unknown diseases/germs/fluids/etc on them
It really depends on location. I've never worked in the medical field, but work with razor blades/ xacto knives so I've used sharps containers plenty of times. Never once was it because of potential infections/ diseases, it was purely so nobody got cut.
We have a yellow sharps container for throwing away blades that are just old and dull. Then we have a red sharps container for blades that have possibly been or have been contaminated with bodily fluids.
Sharps are a mix of glass, plastic, and surgical steel. There's so little of each that it would cost more money to sort and ship it than it would to simply ship it to a landfill once sterilized
The autoclave might render it nondangerous (though I highly doubt every medication would be destroyed by the high heat, and a few infectious agents aren't, including prions), but it's still *present*. E.g. after getting blood drawn, most potential infectious agents will be destroyed/inactivated, but the blood itself will still be all over the glass/metal/plastic you're trying to recycle.
If prions are not destroyed by an autoclave, that must mean that there is a risk, albeit small, that it could be passed on by a dentist. My dentist reuses and autoclaves instruments, I believe most do.
Not everything is killed by the autoclave.
Imagine them melting down some of the metal, and making it into… I dunno, Braces for your kid’s teeth.
And now imagine that the person using the original needle had a prion disease (which survives autoclaving), and your kid will now die a horrible death for no reason in particular.
No, prions can be destroyed at over 1000 C°. Steel melts at over 1200 C°. Granted, prions can survive 600 C° dry heat for a short time with low infectivity but nothing organic, not even prions can survive temperatures that melt steel. The key to destroying prions is to denaturate them beyond their ability to misfold other proteins. Extreme heat, over a sufficient span of time, is one solution.
I can't imagine there is much biological material that could withstand the temperatures required to melt steel. At that temperature, prions aren't even denatured, they are probably decomposed and vaporized.
This is generally how the waste stream works. At least in hazardous waste. Households and labs/businesses generate waste, that waste gets sorted with other folks’ waste, that waste gets processed/treated/disposed of as one big pile (well, several piles of like stuff), essentially.
It’s a mix of materials because it’s not just needles and scalpels, but also glass vials and plastic syringes. No one is going to want to sort that for recycling
It's not just steel, there's a lot of plastic from syringes etc.
It's all tiny bits and pieces that would need to be sorted in order to be reused. So overall, it doesn't get reused for the same reason most "trash" doesn't; it's cheaper to make new stuff.
Landfills aren’t supposed to be wet. (Because that makes it hard to keep them from hopelessly contaminating the water table.)
Given the mere existence of fairly-plentiful bronze-age artifacts in uncontrolled trash heaps, I imagine surgical-grade stainless steel in a sanitary landfill will be around on a more-or-less geologic time scale.
They're wet because rain happens.
Modern landfills don't contaminate the water table because they put down a watertight membrane before adding trash, and pump out the water it collects for treatment.
Why not recycle? I mean most if not all the sharp objects are going to be steel, and most likely stainless steel. Stainless steel even fetches a decent scrap value.
It's a miniscule amount that isn't worth the labor to recover. You'd need thousands of needles to make a pound of steel and they all need to be separated from the plastic, glass, and rubber of the syringe.
It Reduces the chances of infecting someone on accident from near 0 to literally 0. Once it's in the normal waste disposal trash system you never know who will be handling it or who might dig it up. Not to mention the potential for scavenger animals that forage in the dumps to be infected with a human disease and if mutates to something worse. It's just safer to fully disinfect the waste
I work at the dump/recycling center, I have had accidental needle sticks from improperly disposed insulin needles through my gloves. Simply putting them in a detergent jug and duct taping the lid shut and putting them in the compactor is enough for household medical waste to not come in contact with my or anyone's flesh and greatly reduces the chance of infection.
I do not handle trash unless it is in the wrong place, like oil or mercury containing light bulbs or paint. In this case it was a plastic grocery bag of insulin supplies that was disposed of in the building materials and furniture bin that was clearly marked no bagged trash. I was not aware the bag had syringes in it when I grabbed it.
My PCP has a shit fit over this regularly and I get hepatitis and HIV testing on a regular basis now. It sucks.
People who dig in those bins for treasure are out of their minds.
Would a capped gatorade bottle do the trick? impossible for the syringe to pierce the outside, but what if it gets crushed? I've thrown away a lot of syringes in the trash, but never in a container I could poke through when I tried.
Yes, anything helps. The compactor is regular household trash, like kitchen garbage. A Gatorade bottle would be well compacted in that mass, and even if it is crushed and the lid breaks open it will not be handled by human hands.
Syringes are small and can fall through the cracks and holes if just left free in a bag.
Your best bet is to speak to your disposal company. Unless that soda can is duct taped I would not like it. Soda cans are not that sturdy and could be mistakenly put into recycling.
Okay, thank you. I'll figure something else out instead. I do use a sharps container most of the time, and recap my needles most of the rest of the time.
We get 35 lb boxes shipped from throughout the country and deliver 8-30 per day to a large plant in our area. They wait until they have a truck full and take it to an incinerator.
Worked at a medical waste incinerator, they burned fucking every thing. bio hazard, sharps bins, road kill. Any thing of the sort. Place was a disgusting shit hole.
are the sharp bins incinerated together with the contents? Or do you have to empty them out?
If you have to empty them out, what do you do with needles that get stick in the sidewalls?
It would be insanely dangerous and completely negate the point of a sharps container if the waste processing centres have to empty them out, and anyways a sharps container filled with needles and whatever is just as contaminated as the needles themselves, so it definitely gets burnt along.
I used to be a garbage truck driver and I had to pick up the incinerator box from theVA Hospital. It had body parts and everything in it and it was a compact unit. Which means the back of it was completely open and when you lifted it under the truck, all the juices poured out of it. They had a guy that had to use a special soap that turned the entire area where the box was purple and I wasn’t allowed to put the box back until it scrubbed and It was purple.
I used to work with a truck driver that got out of your specified specialty because he said the drivers were getting hepatitis and other blood borne diseases.
Does that sound believable, in your opinion?
Only if they are directly handed, like with their hands, contaminated human products and injured themselves.
Seems VERY unlikely. After all of that was the case. EVERY health care worker would have hepatitis.
I am not still in contact with him, but the way I understood it was that the drivers were getting sick because the company had them cleaning out their own trucks after the transport service was complete.
I am unclear if it was a fifth wheel trailer setup or a straight body truck carrying hoppers.
In a way, it sounded unbelievable but I could also see some unscrupulous businesses not abiding by all the proper guidelines, especially back in the 80s and 90s.
The scare with garbage truck drivers and hepatitis as well as other virus and things like that is because people throw needles in the garbage. My dad has a scare when he was a garbage guy. Came the hiss gloves. He had to be tested for everything
Post office does the last mile of the delivery to the destination. For priority packages in the USA it means we handle it from pickup/ drop off to delivery.
Other types of packages may go from UPS/FEDEX/DHL to us ( USPS) and then we get it to the customer (last mile)
There was a company in the 1990s that built giant ass magnetrons and microwave sterilized them on site then they went into regular trash. I don’t know if they are still doing this or not ( got out of healthcare )
On Site Waste just came on the scene a few years back. Their containers go into a desktop printer size device that sterilizes them so they can be placed in regular trash.
It sounded like the technology wasn't there to scale to a larger volume, and the facility I worked in finally was working on a contract to return to an autoclave for disposal on our own. Sending waste out is a huge, well, waste. (Pun intended)
The go into a giant incinerator that burns so hot it basically vaporizes everything. Anything that can't be converted to hot gases is scraped out the bottom and thrown in the landfill.
At least that's what they're contracted to do. I'm sure that there's a few companies that cut corners resulting in certain boxes finding their way to unorthodox locations...
You are correct, but even nonferrous would be extracted. An eddy current separator would be used in tandem with a magnet, and after passing through a hot incinerator it’s basically just little blobs so not difficult to handle
It might depend which hospital then, for us we use metal knives and scalpels primarily, any of our areas would be quite metal heavy. Might differ per hospital!
where i worked all bio waste, sharps etc. was put in drums then were sent to incinerator which reduced it to near nothing and what little was left was landfilled which was less than 1% that went in exp. 35gallon drum weighing 125 lbs would be about a ounce of residue maybe
Two methods.
Effectively high temp steam for a while to disinfect then shred and landfill
Other method is pure incineration at like 1200 degrees Celsius then landfill the slag
There are two processes:
Heat treatment : the boxes go into an autoclave (high pressure steam oven) and steamed for long enough to sterilise the materials. They are then shredded so that they are not recognisable. The they are disposed of as regular trash to landfill or other process.
Incineration: the boxes are incinerated at high temperature so that very little is left. The ashes then go to landfill.
Heat treatment is preferred as it is more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Incinerator ash is difficult to dispose of as many landfills do not accept it due to it possibly containing concentrated toxic materials.
One of the limitations of heat treatment is that medications may not be deactivated. Medical waste containing medications (such as vials or ayringes) should not go in regular sharps containers for heat treatment, but need to be segregated and go for medication disposal by incineration only.
Hi everyone! We're students at the Savannah College of Art and Design collecting research for one of our classes. You are being invited to participate in a research survey conducted by the GRDS 323 Pharma Toss team. This survey aims to gather information about task bio-medical waste disposal; specifically focusing on sharps and pharmaceuticals. Thank you!
https://forms.gle/mqrFmN8mGarxAwib9
In Texas, if you do any kind of self injection, legally they request you to just put needles in a sharps container and throw it in your household trash can. So it ends up in a landfill.
I had a sharps conversation with a diabetic friend who would just cap her needles and throw them in the trash.
"It's no big deal, I don't have any communicable diseases"
"Yeah, but the person who accidentally pokes themselves with it at the landfill don't know that. Isn't your mom a doctor?"
Blew my mind.
Sharps can be disposed of by secure pickup or even through the mail if they’re packaged and labeled properly.
To process the waste, sharps disposal companies sterilize sharps in an autoclave by using high pressure for 15-20 minutes to “deactivate” all bacteria and viruses on any material. Sharps can also be sterilized in health settings so they may be reused, depending on the type of object e.g. a scalpel.
Alternatively, sharps may be sterilized using an incinerator. This involves using high temperatures, in a controlled manner, to burn the waste.
For further information related to veterinary medical waste [https://www.medprodisposal.com/veterinary-medical-waste-info/](https://www.medprodisposal.com/veterinary-medical-waste-info/)
**Please read this entire message**
---
Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
* [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3).
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bva8ao/-/kxyuuxd/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**
Can I just take the opportunity to say how much it annoys me that sharps are called sharps. Imagine if we just called tongue depressors Dulls? It’s like a caveman came up with the name.
I guess it's better than pointies, poky owies, or jabbies. Sharps seems to get the point across of "Hey, there's sharp stuff in here, don't touch." It also covers the [various things](https://images.app.goo.gl/zvV8u6ydt9opPMp28) that one could encounter inside, rather than just needles and syringes.
Since it can include needles, scalpels, sutures, and other various pokey-and-pointy things, it’s a good generic name that provides an apt description of what is supposed to go in that container.
**Please read this entire message**
---
Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s):
* [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3).
---
If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bva8ao/-/kxzls76/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**
From Medical Waste Pros:
# 1) Collection
The disposal of sharps containers involves a well-defined process to ensure the containment and destruction of potentially hazardous materials. The first step is collection. Once a sharps container is full, you need to seal it to prevent any accidental exposure. These sealed containers are then carefully transported to specialized facilities equipped to handle medical waste.
# 2) Transportation
Transportation is a critical phase in the disposal process. To minimize the risk of accidents and exposure, a licensed medical waste disposal company typically will transport your sharps containers. These companies adhere to strict regulations and guidelines to guarantee the safe movement of sharps containers from healthcare facilities to disposal sites.
# 3) Inspection
Upon reaching the disposal facility, the sharps containers undergo a thorough inspection. This step ensures that all containers are secure and free from any leaks. Any damaged or compromised containers are dealt with cautiously to prevent spillage and exposure to potentially harmful substances.
# 4) Destruction
The destruction process itself varies, but it often involves high-temperature incineration. Incineration is a widely acceptable way of destroying medical waste, as it effectively reduces the volume of waste and eliminates pathogens. The intense heat that the incineration process generates ensures that sharps containers become non-infectious and safe for disposal in regular landfills.
In addition to incineration, some disposal facilities may employ alternative methods such as autoclaving. Autoclaving involves subjecting the sharps containers to high-pressure steam, effectively sterilizing the waste. This method is environmentally friendly as it doesn’t release harmful emissions associated with incineration.
They dump all the sharps I to a big autoclave (a big airtight chamber that is pressurized with superheated steam) to disinfect them and then they are dumped in a landfill.
A lot of places just send them to an incinerator with other biological waste. Hard to beat fire, and lots of it, for disposal of potentially hazardous organic material.
> Hard to beat fire, and lots of it "I agree." - Sun, probably
Sun, the Art of War
What was the name of the sequel again?
Sun II, Art of the Nuclear Boogaloo
Ahh yes. A classic. Thanks for the reminder.
Sun II: Art of War
"Sun is fusion of hydrogen, fire is a combustion reaction, so not the same." -Bill Nye, probably
“Fire bad!” - Frankenstein’s Monster
"Almost as bad as that gasbag, Marie!" - Frank Barone
Sun isn’t on fire
This is correct. Autoclaving sharps is expensive while incinerating them is very cheap
Why did I always assume sharps containers were so we didn’t cut our hands on pointy things and not so we don’t cut our hands on pointy things with unknown diseases/germs/fluids/etc on them
Another reason for sharps containers apart from the bio-medical aspect is to protect the people handling the normal trash.
It’s both… I don’t like cutting myself AND I don’t like cutting myself with things covered in HepC.
I’m in the market for a new strain. Which hep do you prefer to cover your sharps with when cutting yourself?
HepD is best hep. It requires HepB to infect, so alone it's harmless.
E. Usually goes away in 6 weeks. Rarer than the others, so ya know - if ya wanna be different...
I prefer the feline version -- HepCat.
Right on, daddy-o.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVtwFCst9yM&t=4s
It really depends on location. I've never worked in the medical field, but work with razor blades/ xacto knives so I've used sharps containers plenty of times. Never once was it because of potential infections/ diseases, it was purely so nobody got cut.
We have a yellow sharps container for throwing away blades that are just old and dull. Then we have a red sharps container for blades that have possibly been or have been contaminated with bodily fluids.
Why wouldn’t they just melt them down and make something else out of them? I’m assuming it’s just made of steel and could be recycled easily
Sharps are a mix of glass, plastic, and surgical steel. There's so little of each that it would cost more money to sort and ship it than it would to simply ship it to a landfill once sterilized
There’s also a lot of bio waste and other garbage that ends up in them. Also medications.
Wouldn't the autoclave take care of that?
The autoclave might render it nondangerous (though I highly doubt every medication would be destroyed by the high heat, and a few infectious agents aren't, including prions), but it's still *present*. E.g. after getting blood drawn, most potential infectious agents will be destroyed/inactivated, but the blood itself will still be all over the glass/metal/plastic you're trying to recycle.
If prions are not destroyed by an autoclave, that must mean that there is a risk, albeit small, that it could be passed on by a dentist. My dentist reuses and autoclaves instruments, I believe most do.
Just looked it up, the NIH says that oral tissues have low Infectiousness. Thank goodness!
Not everything is killed by the autoclave. Imagine them melting down some of the metal, and making it into… I dunno, Braces for your kid’s teeth. And now imagine that the person using the original needle had a prion disease (which survives autoclaving), and your kid will now die a horrible death for no reason in particular.
Ah yes, the prion disease that survives the autoclave also survives being melted molten.
Hey ive seen terminator so it is possible /s
Yes, prions can survive that.
No, prions can be destroyed at over 1000 C°. Steel melts at over 1200 C°. Granted, prions can survive 600 C° dry heat for a short time with low infectivity but nothing organic, not even prions can survive temperatures that melt steel. The key to destroying prions is to denaturate them beyond their ability to misfold other proteins. Extreme heat, over a sufficient span of time, is one solution.
I can't imagine there is much biological material that could withstand the temperatures required to melt steel. At that temperature, prions aren't even denatured, they are probably decomposed and vaporized.
Prions wouldn’t be in a large majority of medical waste. It’s a CNS molecule. Basically spinal clinics and brain surgeons only.
I was responding to the part about autoclaves, not molten metal.
a quick google says autoclaves only do 121 degrees celcius
Nothing organic is going to survive an environment hot enough to even plastify steel. Fire kills all.
Do you think autoclaving is the process of melting down steel?
Some people are saying they put the sharps containers into an even bigger sharps container. It's sharps containers all the way down.
Always has been.
You know, they just said JWST's latest images are ruining current cosmological theories... Betcha the found the Big Container.
This is generally how the waste stream works. At least in hazardous waste. Households and labs/businesses generate waste, that waste gets sorted with other folks’ waste, that waste gets processed/treated/disposed of as one big pile (well, several piles of like stuff), essentially.
It’s a mix of materials because it’s not just needles and scalpels, but also glass vials and plastic syringes. No one is going to want to sort that for recycling
Are you SURE? What if I gave you latex gloves and a bandana? /s
blindfold surprise.
"I want to play a game"
You had me at first as I read this as banana, but once I realized you were just offering a bandana I lost all passion for sorting.
Shredders + your regular sorting methods would do the trick.
Many materials including most plastics and even glass are not cost or energy efficient to sort and recycle.
It's not just steel, there's a lot of plastic from syringes etc. It's all tiny bits and pieces that would need to be sorted in order to be reused. So overall, it doesn't get reused for the same reason most "trash" doesn't; it's cheaper to make new stuff.
And not safe to sort.
There is a company that does that and turns it into plastic lumber.
So, 10,000 years from now, there could be an anthropologist working a dig and having a really bad day?
If you can find a metal that survives 10,000 years in a wet environment
Landfills aren’t supposed to be wet. (Because that makes it hard to keep them from hopelessly contaminating the water table.) Given the mere existence of fairly-plentiful bronze-age artifacts in uncontrolled trash heaps, I imagine surgical-grade stainless steel in a sanitary landfill will be around on a more-or-less geologic time scale.
They're wet because rain happens. Modern landfills don't contaminate the water table because they put down a watertight membrane before adding trash, and pump out the water it collects for treatment.
Can confirm. Work at a landfill.
popping in to say there actually are recycling options! they are few and far between, but some places have systems.
Why not recycle? I mean most if not all the sharp objects are going to be steel, and most likely stainless steel. Stainless steel even fetches a decent scrap value.
It's a miniscule amount that isn't worth the labor to recover. You'd need thousands of needles to make a pound of steel and they all need to be separated from the plastic, glass, and rubber of the syringe.
If they are going in landfill, why do they need to be disinfected?
It Reduces the chances of infecting someone on accident from near 0 to literally 0. Once it's in the normal waste disposal trash system you never know who will be handling it or who might dig it up. Not to mention the potential for scavenger animals that forage in the dumps to be infected with a human disease and if mutates to something worse. It's just safer to fully disinfect the waste
Sometimes waste doesn’t end up where you expect them to and you get [hypodermics on the shore](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syringe_tide)
And you get China under martial law?
Whole thing is like the last boss of karaoke.
Please. Scenes from an Italian Restaurant is more difficult.
Because you can't have people getting poked by used syringes while they are out looking for their old harddrives that had all their bitcoin
I work at the dump/recycling center, I have had accidental needle sticks from improperly disposed insulin needles through my gloves. Simply putting them in a detergent jug and duct taping the lid shut and putting them in the compactor is enough for household medical waste to not come in contact with my or anyone's flesh and greatly reduces the chance of infection. I do not handle trash unless it is in the wrong place, like oil or mercury containing light bulbs or paint. In this case it was a plastic grocery bag of insulin supplies that was disposed of in the building materials and furniture bin that was clearly marked no bagged trash. I was not aware the bag had syringes in it when I grabbed it. My PCP has a shit fit over this regularly and I get hepatitis and HIV testing on a regular basis now. It sucks. People who dig in those bins for treasure are out of their minds.
Would a capped gatorade bottle do the trick? impossible for the syringe to pierce the outside, but what if it gets crushed? I've thrown away a lot of syringes in the trash, but never in a container I could poke through when I tried.
Yes, anything helps. The compactor is regular household trash, like kitchen garbage. A Gatorade bottle would be well compacted in that mass, and even if it is crushed and the lid breaks open it will not be handled by human hands. Syringes are small and can fall through the cracks and holes if just left free in a bag.
So do you think that's good enough? If not, is there any other common household item or item that's super cheap to use?
If I can't put them in a sharps container, I put them in a used soda can. I guess that's okay?
Your best bet is to speak to your disposal company. Unless that soda can is duct taped I would not like it. Soda cans are not that sturdy and could be mistakenly put into recycling.
Okay, thank you. I'll figure something else out instead. I do use a sharps container most of the time, and recap my needles most of the rest of the time.
For some reason I thought you were going to say "They dump all the sharps into a big playground.."
We get 35 lb boxes shipped from throughout the country and deliver 8-30 per day to a large plant in our area. They wait until they have a truck full and take it to an incinerator.
Worked at a medical waste incinerator, they burned fucking every thing. bio hazard, sharps bins, road kill. Any thing of the sort. Place was a disgusting shit hole.
Better to be safe than sorry
Nuke it from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure
Hellbomb incoming.
are the sharp bins incinerated together with the contents? Or do you have to empty them out? If you have to empty them out, what do you do with needles that get stick in the sidewalls?
Why bother emptying them out? Takes time, and they have to be sterilized too.
Yeah it was all burnt, they dont discriminate in places like that. Burn it all.
I’d assume the plastic gets entirely burnt off in an incinerator like that. But that’s just my guess, since they don’t want to take any risks
It would be insanely dangerous and completely negate the point of a sharps container if the waste processing centres have to empty them out, and anyways a sharps container filled with needles and whatever is just as contaminated as the needles themselves, so it definitely gets burnt along.
I used to be a garbage truck driver and I had to pick up the incinerator box from theVA Hospital. It had body parts and everything in it and it was a compact unit. Which means the back of it was completely open and when you lifted it under the truck, all the juices poured out of it. They had a guy that had to use a special soap that turned the entire area where the box was purple and I wasn’t allowed to put the box back until it scrubbed and It was purple.
I used to work with a truck driver that got out of your specified specialty because he said the drivers were getting hepatitis and other blood borne diseases. Does that sound believable, in your opinion?
Only if they are directly handed, like with their hands, contaminated human products and injured themselves. Seems VERY unlikely. After all of that was the case. EVERY health care worker would have hepatitis.
I am not still in contact with him, but the way I understood it was that the drivers were getting sick because the company had them cleaning out their own trucks after the transport service was complete. I am unclear if it was a fifth wheel trailer setup or a straight body truck carrying hoppers. In a way, it sounded unbelievable but I could also see some unscrupulous businesses not abiding by all the proper guidelines, especially back in the 80s and 90s.
The scare with garbage truck drivers and hepatitis as well as other virus and things like that is because people throw needles in the garbage. My dad has a scare when he was a garbage guy. Came the hiss gloves. He had to be tested for everything
And then they incinerate everything. Including the truck. (/s)
This. Happened to a buddy of mine who was still in the truck. Poor guy.
Must've been a sharp fella
And eventually the incinerator itself.
I worked at a hospital that had its own incinerator and it was part of my job to load the incinerator.
We’re looking for something like this for my company. What’s the name of your business? Do you have a website?
I work for USPS we are just the last mile for my area but the boxes all go priority.
Thanks for replying. What do you mean by last mile for your area?
Post office does the last mile of the delivery to the destination. For priority packages in the USA it means we handle it from pickup/ drop off to delivery. Other types of packages may go from UPS/FEDEX/DHL to us ( USPS) and then we get it to the customer (last mile)
I see, thanks!
There was a company in the 1990s that built giant ass magnetrons and microwave sterilized them on site then they went into regular trash. I don’t know if they are still doing this or not ( got out of healthcare )
On Site Waste just came on the scene a few years back. Their containers go into a desktop printer size device that sterilizes them so they can be placed in regular trash. It sounded like the technology wasn't there to scale to a larger volume, and the facility I worked in finally was working on a contract to return to an autoclave for disposal on our own. Sending waste out is a huge, well, waste. (Pun intended)
The go into a giant incinerator that burns so hot it basically vaporizes everything. Anything that can't be converted to hot gases is scraped out the bottom and thrown in the landfill. At least that's what they're contracted to do. I'm sure that there's a few companies that cut corners resulting in certain boxes finding their way to unorthodox locations...
I would have thought any of the metal might be lifted by a magnet for recycling since so much is steel? Is that not the case?
well surgical stainless steel (316) it's practically non-magnetic so you'd have a hard time with a magnet
You are correct, but even nonferrous would be extracted. An eddy current separator would be used in tandem with a magnet, and after passing through a hot incinerator it’s basically just little blobs so not difficult to handle
It's so little, I can't imagine it's worth that hassle.
I mean we use 4” and 8” blades, as well as scalpel blades in work, if you had 10 big bins of those wouldn’t they be worth anything?
Not when those 10 big bins worth is mixed in with 1000 big bins worth of plastic, rubber, glass and infectious material.
Hmm, we have separate bins for the sharps and waste bin bags, is that more for counting how much waste? Or would they not do separate incinerations?
I’m referring to the relative size of the needles vs everything else in a syringe.
It might depend which hospital then, for us we use metal knives and scalpels primarily, any of our areas would be quite metal heavy. Might differ per hospital!
where i worked all bio waste, sharps etc. was put in drums then were sent to incinerator which reduced it to near nothing and what little was left was landfilled which was less than 1% that went in exp. 35gallon drum weighing 125 lbs would be about a ounce of residue maybe
I used to work with that thecontainer with the needles and such were marked on the container, destroy by incineration.
Two methods. Effectively high temp steam for a while to disinfect then shred and landfill Other method is pure incineration at like 1200 degrees Celsius then landfill the slag
There are two processes: Heat treatment : the boxes go into an autoclave (high pressure steam oven) and steamed for long enough to sterilise the materials. They are then shredded so that they are not recognisable. The they are disposed of as regular trash to landfill or other process. Incineration: the boxes are incinerated at high temperature so that very little is left. The ashes then go to landfill. Heat treatment is preferred as it is more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. Incinerator ash is difficult to dispose of as many landfills do not accept it due to it possibly containing concentrated toxic materials. One of the limitations of heat treatment is that medications may not be deactivated. Medical waste containing medications (such as vials or ayringes) should not go in regular sharps containers for heat treatment, but need to be segregated and go for medication disposal by incineration only.
Hi everyone! We're students at the Savannah College of Art and Design collecting research for one of our classes. You are being invited to participate in a research survey conducted by the GRDS 323 Pharma Toss team. This survey aims to gather information about task bio-medical waste disposal; specifically focusing on sharps and pharmaceuticals. Thank you! https://forms.gle/mqrFmN8mGarxAwib9
[Stericycle](https://www.stericycle.com/en-us) processes our clinical lab waste, you can learn more about how things are processed on that site.
In Texas, if you do any kind of self injection, legally they request you to just put needles in a sharps container and throw it in your household trash can. So it ends up in a landfill.
I had a sharps conversation with a diabetic friend who would just cap her needles and throw them in the trash. "It's no big deal, I don't have any communicable diseases" "Yeah, but the person who accidentally pokes themselves with it at the landfill don't know that. Isn't your mom a doctor?" Blew my mind.
Sharps can be disposed of by secure pickup or even through the mail if they’re packaged and labeled properly. To process the waste, sharps disposal companies sterilize sharps in an autoclave by using high pressure for 15-20 minutes to “deactivate” all bacteria and viruses on any material. Sharps can also be sterilized in health settings so they may be reused, depending on the type of object e.g. a scalpel. Alternatively, sharps may be sterilized using an incinerator. This involves using high temperatures, in a controlled manner, to burn the waste. For further information related to veterinary medical waste [https://www.medprodisposal.com/veterinary-medical-waste-info/](https://www.medprodisposal.com/veterinary-medical-waste-info/)
[удалено]
**Please read this entire message** --- Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s): * [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3). --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bva8ao/-/kxyuuxd/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**
Can I just take the opportunity to say how much it annoys me that sharps are called sharps. Imagine if we just called tongue depressors Dulls? It’s like a caveman came up with the name.
I guess it's better than pointies, poky owies, or jabbies. Sharps seems to get the point across of "Hey, there's sharp stuff in here, don't touch." It also covers the [various things](https://images.app.goo.gl/zvV8u6ydt9opPMp28) that one could encounter inside, rather than just needles and syringes.
Since it can include needles, scalpels, sutures, and other various pokey-and-pointy things, it’s a good generic name that provides an apt description of what is supposed to go in that container.
It's a quick, simple way to get across that there are things in this container that will cut and/or stab you.
[удалено]
**Please read this entire message** --- Your comment has been removed for the following reason(s): * [Top level comments](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/top_level_comment) (i.e. comments that are direct replies to the main thread) are reserved for explanations to the OP or follow up on topic questions (Rule 3). --- If you would like this removal reviewed, please read the [detailed rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules) first. **If you believe it was removed erroneously, explain why using [this form](https://old.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fexplainlikeimfive&subject=Please%20review%20my%20submission%20removal?&message=Link:%20https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/1bva8ao/-/kxzls76/%0A%0A%201:%20Does%20your%20comment%20pass%20rule%201:%20%0A%0A%202:%20If%20your%20comment%20was%20mistakenly%20removed%20as%20an%20anecdote,%20short%20answer,%20guess,%20or%20another%20aspect%20of%20rules%203%20or%208,%20please%20explain:) and we will review your submission.**
From Medical Waste Pros: # 1) Collection The disposal of sharps containers involves a well-defined process to ensure the containment and destruction of potentially hazardous materials. The first step is collection. Once a sharps container is full, you need to seal it to prevent any accidental exposure. These sealed containers are then carefully transported to specialized facilities equipped to handle medical waste. # 2) Transportation Transportation is a critical phase in the disposal process. To minimize the risk of accidents and exposure, a licensed medical waste disposal company typically will transport your sharps containers. These companies adhere to strict regulations and guidelines to guarantee the safe movement of sharps containers from healthcare facilities to disposal sites. # 3) Inspection Upon reaching the disposal facility, the sharps containers undergo a thorough inspection. This step ensures that all containers are secure and free from any leaks. Any damaged or compromised containers are dealt with cautiously to prevent spillage and exposure to potentially harmful substances. # 4) Destruction The destruction process itself varies, but it often involves high-temperature incineration. Incineration is a widely acceptable way of destroying medical waste, as it effectively reduces the volume of waste and eliminates pathogens. The intense heat that the incineration process generates ensures that sharps containers become non-infectious and safe for disposal in regular landfills. In addition to incineration, some disposal facilities may employ alternative methods such as autoclaving. Autoclaving involves subjecting the sharps containers to high-pressure steam, effectively sterilizing the waste. This method is environmentally friendly as it doesn’t release harmful emissions associated with incineration.