Physical features of Health Care Waste

A monitoring work was recently carried out in two major Health Care Facilities (HCFs) in Italy, both located in Palermo, to obtain information on waste generation rates. Monitoring consisted in weighing infectious waste containers for 15 days in 4 Departments for each health care facility. From values obtained monthly production, specific weights and Production Indexes were calculated. The main producers of waste appeared Oncological DH and Resuscitation for both HCFs, with more than 4 and 3 kg measured per occupied place and day, respectively. About specific weight, apparent bulk values always below 200 kg/m3 were calculated. From the short observation performed it seems that notable improvements in this key feature can be achieved simply paying more attention to selecting real infectious waste and carefully filling up the special bags/boxes.