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Types Of Hazardous Waste

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Community nowadays is being ignorant towards waste management issues. According to Oxford Dictionaries (2015), waste is defined as materials that are no longer needed and are thrown away. Gradually, the amount of waste material especially hazardous waste increased. Hazardous waste is defined as “flammable, corrosive, reactive, caustic and toxic” (Kummer, 1999). EPA (1986) stated that “a solid waste is hazardous if it listed in one of the three categories which are source-specific waste, generic waste or commercial chemical products”. In general, hazardous waste can be classified into three major types: industrial, medical and households (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1). The first type of hazardous waste is industrial waste. Researchers …show more content…

Medical waste is generally define as any solid waste that is generated in the diagnosis, treatment or immunizations of human beings or animals in related research, biological production or testing (Oyewole, 2013). Based on the study done by Mbarki, Kabbachi, Ezaidi and Benssaou (2013), this type of waste contains infectious waste, toxic chemicals and heavy metals, and may contain substances that are genotoxic that may lead to cancer or radioactive to human health. The World Health Organization, WHO (2010) has classified medical waste into eight different types which are infectious, sharps, pathological, pharmaceuticals, radioactive, pressurized containers and heavy metal content. As for the infectious waste type, it is a material that containing pathogens in high concentration enough to cause diseases on exposures such as waste from surgery, lab cultures, used dressings and others. Besides that, sharp waste types include disposable needles, syringes, blades and broken glasses meanwhile pathological types which are body parts such as organs and human flesh with blood and body fluids. Other than that is pharmaceuticals products which are drugs and chemicals that are returned, spilled, expired or contaminated. The next type which is chemical and radioactive waste resulting from diagnosis and cleaning material and also radioactive substances used in diagnosis and treatment of diseases respectively. As for pressurized containers including gas cylinders and substances with high heavy metal content such as broken mercury thermometers and blood pressure gauges. The most dominant types of medical waste are infectious, pathological and sharp medical apparatus (WHO, 2010). Based on WHO (2011) statistical analysis, the high income countries generate on average up to 0.5 kg of hazardous waste per bed per day and meanwhile, the low income countries generate on average 0.2 kg of hazardous waste per hospital bed per day.

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