Dealing with your household medical waste most probably won’t require you to procure medical waste disposal services Maine. However, you must be careful enough to check your state laws and regulation regarding the proper handling of all your household medical waste.
How To Safely Handle Household Medical Waste
Firstly, it is important to point out that there are no studies showing that household medical waste are less dangerous than waste produced in hospitals. Thus, appropriate safety measures must be taken while handling them. Here are suggestions on how to handle the categories of medical waste in the house.
For Sharps
If there is someone in the home that takes injections regularly, then there should be a sharps container placed somewhere in the house. It is advised that this container be labeled “sharps” and be kept in a place where it cannot be assessed by children. They should also be made of sturdy materials and be formed in a way that pets and children would find hard to open if they somehow gain access to it.
Do not try to detach needles from syringes or bend them before disposing of them in the sharps container. Other medical supplies such as needle pens and lancets should also go into the sharps containers immediately after use.
When the sharp container gets full, you can place it, still sealed, into your regular trash bag. Or if there is a hospital or clinic nearby willing to take your sharp waste, then you can give it to them. NEVER put sharps waste into recycling bins.
For Cloth Items
Cloth items such as gloves, bandages, and gauzes that may have blood or other bodily fluids on them might be put into sealable plastic bags. When this is full, you can seal it and also place it in your regular trash bag to be picked up by sanitation workers.
For Medicines
You can simply throw your unused medicines away in your trash bag, or you can turn them in at any of the healthcare facilities around you that offer drop boxes for people to dispose of their unused medicines. There are also a number of large drug stores that also provide dropboxes of these sorts.
There are many ways to dispose of your unused medicines. One way to NEVER dispose of them however is down the toilet. This may only cause problems for the community as the sewage system is not designed to breakdown drugs. Also, giving your prescription medicine to another person is very wrong.
For Regular Cleaning
If you have someone undergoing some sort of treatment staying in your home, then you might have to take a different approach towards cleaning your home. You might need to increase the regularity with which you clean the areas that the patient often visits. And your cleanup might need to involve the use of bleach and ammonia solutions.
Basically, all medical waste generated in a household setting can e put into the trash bin. Although, if the waste is considered hazardous, then you might need to ask your healthcare provider for tips and guidance on how to responsibly dispose of them.