Today's fact is inspired by my brother, who is apparently concerned about medical waste. Who woulda thunk it? Anyways,
Under Illinois law, household waste (including my needles and test strips and so forth) does not constitute potentially infectious medical waste.
Household medical waste must be put inside of a sturdy, nonpuncturable container, such as a sharps container or a laundry detergent bottle, marked DO NOT RECYCLE, and can be thrown out.
The United States does not have uniform regulations for disposing of hospital generated medical waste, but generally it is incinerated. I did not realize until I looked it up just now that that means reducing it to ash, energy, and gases. That's a pretty big pollutant sort of thing.
This concludes a month of diabetes facts. I decided to do this in honor of Diabetes Month, not nanoblomo, but I guess it works. But don't worry, I still have three brothers to interview, and lots more facts to share. Just not every day, probably.
3 comments:
Well, I'll be looking forward to all those interviews. Thank you so much for sharing the past month with me. It's been a great experience.
Actually very little medical waste is incinerated today, most medical waste in the USA is treated in Autoclaves which use steam sterilization. Most incinerators have been shut down due to EPA restrictions. There is only one commercial incinerator in Illinois used for medical waste which is in Clinton IL and owned and operated by Stericycle.
As a general rule, proper waste disposal is the concern of everyone. All of us should, at least, have a fairly good idea as to the proper handling and disposal of all types of waste. Especially for medical waste, guidelines for proper disposal are designed to protect against the spread of infections and diseases.
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