Re: block disposal and -heads
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From: | Tim Morken <timcdc@hotmail.com> |
To: | Histonet@pathology.swmed.edu |
Reply-To: | |
Content-Type: | text/plain; format=flowed |
John,
It turns out that most of the problem is one of perception. If people find
human remains in any form in a public disposal site they go beserk - even if
there is no harm in it. "Medical waste" has a bad connotation and people
assume the worst - some sort of infectious or harmful material. Some just
don't like the idea of disposing of human remains in such a way.
Here at the CDC we don't use red plastic bags for our autoclaved waste
because the local authorities see anything in a red bag as an infectious
threat - despite assurances it has been autoclaved. Instead we use clear
bags with biohazard markings that turn from red to brown during autoclaving.
I guess the clear bags don't attract as much attention.
My pet peeve is that we must dispose of pipet-tip boxes in autoclave waste,
instead of sending them back to the manufactuer for re-use, because they may
have been 'infected' during use. No matter that we don't deal with any live
infectious material in our lab!
My lesson from all this is that people don't trust the medical/research
establishment any more than they do the average business so maximum
precautions are prescribed at all times.
Tim Morken, B.A., EMT(MSA), HTL(ASCP)
Infectious Disease Pathology
Centers for Disease Control
MS-G32
1600 Clifton Rd.
Atlanta, GA 30333
USA
email: tim9@cdc.gov
timcdc@hotmail.com
Phone: (404) 639-3964
FAX: (404)639-3043
----Original Message Follows----
From: "J. A. Kiernan" <jkiernan@julian.uwo.ca>
To: Histonet <Histonet@pathology.swmed.edu>
Subject: Re: block disposal and -heads
Date: Sun, 02 Jul 2000 01:06:43 -0400 (EDT)
On Sat, 1 Jul 2000, Becky Scholes wrote:
> Just as with slides, our local waste system considers paraffin blocks
> biohazard waste.
How do they justify this? When a person dies with a horrible
infectious disease the body is put in a box and planted in the
ground to be consumed by worms. A box (or plastic bag) of old
paraffin blocks at a landfill site is buried at a similar or
greater depth. Each individual block is entombed in wax providing
yet another layer of "protection." Furthermore, the tissues
were fixed and processed before they ever went into the wax,
killing everything except possibly some prions. Objects in the
landfill are even less likely to be eaten by people than corpses
in the graveyard.
It is even more crazy to consider slides hazardous, with every section
encapsulated in glass. Even the sarcophagous nematodes aren't going
to be able to eat these, however hard they try.
Who are the ignorant fools who get away with making such regulations?
They must have their bosses, or some chain of command whereby they
could be gently and politely influenced: to reverse their rulings or
find themselves lining up in the labour exchange for jobs cleaning
out public lavatories. ("This job has prospects, lad. If you work
hard for three years, we'll give you a brush.") It should not be
necessary to spend public money on expensive disposal of harmless
materials that have been declared "biohazardous" by some public
servant who is either a half-wit or a director of a hazardous waste
collection company. At a local level it should be possible to
overcome this problem by approaching senior municipal officials
and politicians, and writing letters to local newspapers that name
those who made the silly rules and explain the unnecessary costs to
the taxpayers.
Good luck, and happy campaigning.
John A. Kiernan,
Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology,
The University of Western Ontario,
LONDON, Canada N6A 5C1
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