Management Consulting Research on Waste Management - Essay Example

Any lapse in healthcare waste management can pose health risks to the health care workers, waste handlers and also to the general public (www.healthcarewaste.org) Although there is growing awareness in this field and most of the health care institutions are taking steps towards effective health care waste management, there is another very risk prone area and that is domestic health care waste. Many studies have been done on how to improve waste management at hospitals and other health care centers but not much has been done in the field of waste generated at homes.

Environmental studies have shown presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment like air and water. These environmental hazards have to be handled on two fronts: - how to nullify the ill-effects of these pollutants and more importantly how to control it at source. This research proposes to study the sources i.e. dumping of household pharmaceutical wastes into the sewer systems, sewer discharges from hospitals, doctor's offices, clinics, nursing homes, runoff from veterinary uses, and sewer discharges from patients themselves in their urine and feces (Daughton, 2003).

So far most of the studies have been focused on status of water quality in pharmaceutical waste managment, little has been done . Pharmaceutical use is common-In U.S., in the past six months, about three out of five residents have taken at least one over-the-counter drug product whereas 54% have taken a prescription drugs (NCPIE, 2002).The status of household pharmaceutical waste managementWhile the awareness regarding the drugs is widely spreading, awareness about management of unwanted pharmaceuticals is limited, disjointed, conflicting and often absent.

Uncontrolled sewer disposal remain unchanged, despite the well-publicized threat to water quality. There are laws that define and classify any waste pharmaceutical as hazardous waste based on toxicity, reactivity, corrosivity, ignitability, or exceeding threshold limit values (Pharmaceuticals.org). They are controlled by different state authorities, for example in California it falls under the regulatory authority of the California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) (Beckman, 2004).

But there is no accurate reference list available for identifying which pharmaceuticals are hazardous waste and which are not (Beckman, 2004; Smith, 1999). General examples of pharmaceuticals that would be hazardous waste can be: any aqueous formulation containing 24% or more alcohol, sanitizing or topical preparations containing solvents like rubbing alcohol as they are ignitable; nitroglycerin as it is reactive; lindane as it is toxic; vaccines, eye and ear drops with mercury or m-cresol preservatives as they are toxic or exceed threshold limit value.

Most of the hazardous waste is managed by the household waste management as there is no clear classification or awareness. Even if there was data available to allow differentiation of hazardous pharmaceuticals from non-hazardous pharmaceuticals, it would not