Health Care Waste production: measures and estimates in Joint Hospitals “Civico e Benfratelli, Ascoli e Di Cristina”, Palermo, Italy.

A monitoring work was carried out in October 2006 in one large health care facility located in Palermo. The monitoring consisted in weighing infectious waste containers filled in some Departments purposely chosen. As a second stage of the work a comparison was attempted between the results obtained from the waste production monitoring and the archive data recorded in the same time. A restricted list of purchased products out of the general one was extracted. Such list allows one to calculate approximately the mass of medical devices purchased and their composition. To these materials a reasonable change in humidity after use was attributed. It was possible in this deductive way to draw a probable composition of health care waste materials, which is forbidden to ascertain by direct inspection.