A biohazardous waste is any potentially dangerous biological waste for human or animal health, such as:
• human blood and its components, in liquid or semi-liquid form, dry or not • human body fluids (including semen, vaginal secretions, cerebrospinal fluid, synovial fluid, pleural fluid, pericardial fluid, peritoneal fluid, amniotic fluid, and saliva), in the form liquid or semi-liquid, dry or not
• human pathological debris: all tissues, organs and parts of the human body
• animal waste: all animal carcasses and body parts
• microbiological waste: laboratory by-products containing infectious agents (including discarded specimen cultures, stocks of etiologic agents, discarded live and attenuated viruses, wastes from the production of biologics and sera, disposable culture plates, and devices used to transfer, inoculate and mix cultures)
• Sharps waste: sharp medical utensils such as scalpels, needles, glass slides, lancets, glass pipettes, broken glass that have been contaminated with potentially infectious material.
To help laboratories and healthcare operators navigate through the strict legislation on hazardous waste disposal, the Department of Health has created the following classification:
offensive waste
It is non-clinical, non-infectious waste and does not contain pharmaceutical or chemical substances, but it can be unpleasant for anyone who comes into contact with it.
You must separate offensive healthcare waste from both clinical and mixed municipal waste.
If you have produced more than 7kg of offensive municipal by-products, or have more than one bag in a collection period, you must segregate it from any mixed municipal waste.
If you have produced less, you can dispose of your offending municipal waste in your mixed municipal waste (“black bag”).
Plaster and similar waste
Most plaster byproducts are not infectious. It should be kept separate from any infectious plaster waste, which should be placed in the bagged infectious clinical waste stream.
drug residues
A drug is considered cytotoxic or cytostatic for classification purposes if it is any of the following:
• acutely toxic
• carcinogenic
• mutagenic
• toxic for reproduction
Sharps and Related By-Products
The safe management and disposal of sharps is vital to ensure that the risks associated with handling sharps are eliminated and to ensure compliance with Hazardous Waste Regulations (Scotland Special Waste Regulations).
Disposal of sharps is determined by drug contamination. To ensure compliance with the Hazardous Waste Regulations, the proper segregation and storage of sharps in color-coded bins and special containers is essential.
• Orange Containers – For storage and disposal of sharps that do not contain or are contaminated with medication, such as sharps used for blood samples and acupuncture.
• Yellow containers: for the storage and disposal of sharps contaminated or containing medicines or anesthetics
• Purple containers: for the disposal of sharp objects and medicines with cytotoxic or cytostatic content or contamination.
• Blue containers-For the disposal of expired medications, used medication denaturation kits and discard items for use in the handling of pharmaceutical products such as bottles or boxes with residues, gloves, masks, connection tubes, syringe bodies and medicine vials Anatomical residues.
Anatomical waste from operating rooms requires special containment and must be stored, transported, and disposed of as hazardous waste to ensure that it does not present a risk to human health or the environment.
Anatomical debris includes:
• Body parts
• Organs
• Blood bags and preserved blood
Laboratory chemicals and photochemicals
Hazardous chemical waste: includes:
• Waste classified as ‘hazardous’ in the 2005 Hazardous Waste Regulation amended in 2016 (Annexes 1 and 2) or in the ‘Waste List’ of the European Waste Catalog (EWC).
• Other wastes displaying one or more of the hazardous properties (HP1 to HP15) listed in the Regulations (see Environmental Agency Guidance WM3).
Any medical supplies or other equipment (such as used gloves, towels, bandages and dressings, tubing) that have come into contact with hazardous materials and consequently show more than trace elements of these materials are also classified as hazardous waste.
The Environmental Protection Law includes a ‘Duty of Care’ that requires all persons involved in waste management, including producers, to take reasonable and appropriate steps to ensure that:
• Waste is only stored, treated, deposited or disposed of in accordance with a waste management license or other authorization;
• The waste does not escape the control of the holder;
• Waste is only transferred to authorized persons, such as registered waste haulers or licensed disposal operations authorized to accept that type of waste;
• All shipments/movements of waste are accompanied by an adequate written description of the same that will allow them to be identified and subsequently managed correctly.
All Waste Matters offers specialist laboratory waste disposal services to a wide customer base across the UK, from commercial laboratories to schools, colleges and universities.
From our fully licensed waste management facility in Kent, we can offer a personalized lab waste collection and disposal service of any unwanted chemicals and lab waste.
We collect with our own vehicles and our licensed laboratory waste disposal facility is regularly inspected by the Environment Agency.
This is essential to give our customers complete peace of mind and ensure laboratory waste is treated in accordance with and exceeding all recommended guidelines.