Medical waste management/incineration

摘要

Major changes in medical waste disposal practices are expected to occur in the future because of regulatory requirements from both the Federal and State level; namely: 1. At the Federal level, under the Clean Air Act of 1970 and its recently enacted Amendments of 1990, EPA proposed air emission standards to regulate medical waste incineration in February 1995. 2. At the State level, many States are developing new standards to control medical waste disposal. Because of the information need to support the implementation of the regulations, both the Federal Government and the States have conducted various studies. This paper represents a discussion of what has been learned as a result of these studies. Major activities have included: 3. EPA's/Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory's (RREL's) State-of-the-Art Assessment of Medical Waste Thermal Treatment; 4. Four medical waste management workshops co-sponsored by EPA's RREL, EPA's Office of Solid Waste (OSW), and the California Air Resources Board; 5. Field tests of medical waste incinerator performance conducted by EPA and the States; 6. Evaluation of medical waste treatment technologies conducted by private industries; 7. The promulgation of medical waste incineration standards by several States and the active development of Federal standards by EPA's Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS); and 8. EPA's/OSW's submittal of their first Interim Report to Congress.