www. Char l es tonPhys i c i ans . com | www.Hea l thL i nksChar l es ton . com | 95 “[Separation] is very important because only 20% of health care waste is infectious and hazardous and requires extra care and treatment,” Montgomery said. “So we have the combined double burden of already weak systems for waste management, coupled by the fact that health workers are extremely overburdened with increased patient loads and can’t manage the existing waste, let alone extra waste.” Examples of medical waste include blood, bandages, disposable masks, body parts removed during surgery and medical sharps – the WHO considers needles and syringes to be a substantial part of the problem because an estimated 16 billion injections are administered annually worldwide. Not all of the needles and syringes are properly disposed of afterward. “In 2020 alone, 4.5 trillion additional disposable masks were thrown away by the public, resulting in 6 million extra tons of waste,” Montgomery said. In the United States, federal, state, and local agencies have established regulations that medical facilities are supposed to be following. Most of the hazardous or infectious waste is disposed of or sterilized in autoclaves – machines that use steam under pressure to kill harmful bacteria, viruses, fungi and spores. This type of waste can be put in a red bag and delivered to another autoclave site. Some hospitals, such as the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, which are registered as extra-large-quantity generators of infectious waste, have their own autoclaves.
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