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#1 Posted : 08 December 2005 18:04:00(UTC)
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Posted By frank beckett I've been approached by the departmental safety officer in an attempt to identify how we may dispose of used plastic sample transport bags. most if not all are uncontaminated with pathological samples, but we cannot say for sure. My view is to dispose of them as if they all were contaminated, but for the future we're not certain. Does nayone know if they are classified as non-hazardous or hazardous waste if they are uncontaminated? Maybe we should just autoclave the lot!!! frank
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#2 Posted : 08 December 2005 22:50:00(UTC)
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Posted By John Webster You have said it yourself. You cannot be sure if the bags are uncontaminated, so you must assume that they are. Now is there any risk of that contamination being infectious? If you are talking about path samples from patients sent for analysis, then some of them are likely to contain pathogenic material. If so, the bags will have to be disposed of as clinical waste. At the moment, the current practice of medical path labs autoclaving everything before disposal as low risk clinical waste for heat treatment is under review. Basically there is concern at the efficacy of lab autoclaves. If an autoclave CANNOT be guaranteed to render waste safe, then it needs to go for incineration as "high risk" waste, not for heat treatment with "low risk" clinical waste. If it CAN be guaranteed to do the job, then we should only need to dispose of the waste with the domestic type waste stream, not then heat treat it.
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#3 Posted : 09 December 2005 11:00:00(UTC)
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Posted By Stephen R Robinson We have a similar problem with out Asbestos samples. We class all sample bags as being contaminated with their contents. Therefore they are disposed of as Asbestos Waste. (Even samples found not to contain Asbestos are disposed of as Asbestos waste - this prevents confusion as an Asbestos sample bag found in a municipal waste stream would cause a scare).
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