Refrigerated Vehicles Playing an Important Role in the Carriage of Global Medical Waste
May 22, 2020
With the outbreak of coronavirus in the world, more and more cities have been overloaded with medical waste. During the epidemic period of COVID-19, there are six times more medical waste produced up than usual in Wuhan, China. In California, treatment centers and waste haulers are overburdened by a surge of regulated medical waste, including face masks, single-use gloves, disposable instruments, garbage contaminated with bodily fluids etc. In Bangkok, 12,600 extra tonnes of medical waste were produced.
Medical wastes have become a bigger concern for hospitals. All COVID-19 medical waste must be properly transported and urgently treated to prevent them from posing any harm to the public before disinfecting, incinerating or land-filling.
Transportation of Biomedical Waste Management
In medical industry, the lifecycle of the management of biomedical waste is usually as follows: generation, collection, transportation, storage, treatment and disposal.
Generation & Collection: it’s the generators’s (hospitals, dental practices, veterinary clinics, medical research labs) responsibility to package and segregate waste for transport to treatment facilities.
Transportation: Transportation represents an important link in the clinical waste management program. The transportation of biomedical/clinical waste usually comprises of two parts, 1) to transport the infectious medical waste from hospitals to treatment centers by a registered transporter; 2) to transport the remaining clinical waste for disposal in a landfill.
Storage and treatment: biohazard waste, radioactive, RCRA hazardous waste are typically transported from the generator to a treatment, storage and disposal off-site rather than straight to a landfill.
Disposal: the regulated medical waste and processed waste are transported by a refrigerated truck to the waste management facility for further incinerating and landfilling.
Function of Refrigerated Trucks in the Transportation of Medical Waste
Transportation of biomedical waste products should be done in a highly protected and safe vehicles.
Clinical waste requiring refrigeration. Why Refrigeration:
◆ It is the safest and more reliable way of removing uncertain waste. Having it out in the open and not temperature secured could be very risky.
◆ Refrigeration of clinical waste will help prevent microbial from proliferating in a rather low temperature, good for human beings. The temperature of the refrigerated unit or containers should be kept at 4℃ to 6℃.
◆ Clinical waste that may rapidly decompose (e.g. waste containing human or animal tissues) should be stored under refrigeration to prevent nuisance such as obnoxious odour.
Generally, untreated medical waste is transported in refrigerated box trucks. As the most effective waste transport vehicles, refrigerated trucks is now playing an essential role in the carriage of clinical waste. Moreover, it was reported that refrigerated trucks were served as temporary storage of the bodies of COVID-19 victims at the peak of the outbreak in New York city.
Early in 2007, Gozo hospital in Malta has begun to use refrigerated trucks to temporarily store the clinical waste, and then transported them to the incineration facilities.
Example of vehicle employed to collect, remove or transport clinical waste in China during the outbreak of corona virus:
Best Refrigeration Units Designed for Medical Waste Refrigerated Transport Vehicles
