Methods to Decontaminate Medical Waste before Disposal

When you run a healthcare facility, it’s inevitable for it to produce medical waste. Obviously as an in charge of a medical facility, you should discard the medical waste so as to run your facility smoothly. So, you should hire medical waste disposal company. However, in addition to hiring such a company, if you know some methods of waste decontamination, that will help you not only in reducing the volume of the garbage, but also in decontaminating infectious substances so as to send in the trash as non-infectious. Experts at the famous San Francisco medical waste disposal company, Biomedical Waste Solutions, share here their expertise on various types of medical waste treatment methods.

Autoclaving

Autoclaving or thermal treatment is usually used for sharps and some other sorts of infectious trash. An autoclave is a large pressure cooker in which high temperature and steam is generated, that penetrates deeply into all waste materials and kills all microbes. You will need this sterilization based on the amount and types of waste; so, you can choose the correct size of autoclave for your healthcare facility. As such this appliance ranges in size from 100 liters to 4000 liters.

These days you also get automatic autoclaves which need minimum human involvement and so, reduce injuries by needles and contamination. Once the waste is decontaminated, you can hand it over to your medical waste disposal company as non-infectious waste.

Remember that chemical medical waste like chemotherapy waste can’t be decontaminated with an autoclave.

Chemical Treatment

This method is brought in use to decontaminate or deactivate liquid garbage. This should be done because liquids are highly likely to spill. Even some non-liquid wastes can also be treated with chemical treatment though, but only after shredding to ensure that all their pieces are exposed to chemicals.

Chemicals like sodium hydroxide, chlorine or calcium oxide can be used to disinfect liquid (and sometimes non-liquid) wastes. But they have to be used carefully as they sometimes produce byproducts that are equally or more hazardous. The staff executing the method should be knowledgeable.

Treating in Microwave

A microwave treatment is same as an autoclave, because here too heat is used to decontaminate the waste. This treatment is perfect for trash that is not totally solid or dry as the moisture in it facilitates the heat to go deeper in the materials and sterilize them well. Therefore before microwave treatment most waste substances are shredded and water is added to them for the optimum effect. As a bonus, shredding decreases the volume of the trash.

Biomedical Waste Solutions offer medical waste disposal in San Francisco and many other places. Visit their website to know the range of services they offer.