Generation and composition of medical wastes from private medical microbiology laboratories Dimitrios Komilis a,⇑ , Nikolaos Makroleivaditis b , Eftychia Nikolakopoulou c a School of Science and Technology, Hellenic Open University, Patras, Greece b Chemistry Teacher, Thessaloniki, Greece c General Hospital of Xanthi, Xanthi, Greece article info Article history: Received 14 October 2016 Revised 5 December 2016 Accepted 20 January 2017 Available online xxxx Keywords: Medical waste Health-care waste Infectious waste Medical laboratories Medical microbiology Regression modeling abstract A study on the generation rate and the composition of solid medical wastes (MW) produced by private medical microbiology laboratories (PMML) was conducted in Greece. The novelty of the work is that no such information exists in the literature for this type of laboratories worldwide. Seven laboratories were selected with capacities that ranged from 8 to 88 examinees per day. The study lasted 6 months and daily recording of MW weights was done over 30 days during that period. The rates were correlated to the number of examinees, examinations and personnel. Results indicated that on average 35% of the total MW was hazardous (infectious) medical wastes (IFMW). The IFMW generation rates ranged from 11.5 to 32.5 g examinee À1 d À1 while an average value from all 7 labs was 19.6 ± 9.6 g examinee À1 d À1 or 2.27 ± 1.11 g examination À1 d À1 . The average urban type medical waste generation rate was 44.2 ± 32.5 g examinee À1 d À1 . Using basic regression modeling, it was shown that the number of exam- inees and examinations can be predictors of the IFMW generation, but not of the urban type MW gener- ation. The number of examinations was a better predictor of the MW amounts than the number of examinees. Statistical comparison of the means of the 7 PMML was done with standard ANOVA tech- niques after checking the normality of the data and after doing the appropriate transformations. Based on the results of this work, it is approximated that 580 tonnes of infectious MW are generated annually by the PMML in Greece. Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The investigation of medical waste (MW) generation and com- position have attracted the attention of many researchers lately. This interest has been expressed in many studies worldwide that have focused on measuring generation rates and composition (Abdulla et al., 2008; Ananth et al., 2010; Bdour et al., 2007; Birpinar et al., 2009; Cheng et al., 2009, 2010; Jang et al., 2006; Eker and Bilgili, 2011; El-Salam, 2010; Graikos et al., 2010; Komilis and Katsafaros, 2011; Manga et al., 2011; Patwary et al., 2009, 2011; Sanida et al., 2010; Taghipour and Mosaferi, 2009; Yong et al., 2009; Voudrias et al., 2012). Almost all published work, actually, has focused on the recording of quantities and quality of medical wastes that originate from public institutions and hospitals. The term medical waste is used interchangeably in the litera- ture with other terms, such as health-care and hospital waste (Komilis, 2016). Commonly, medical waste (the preferred term in this work) is comprised of the hazardous and non-hazardous frac- tions. Rough estimates from WHO (WHO, 2016) state that the non- hazardous fraction in MW can be around 85%; the rest is hazardous medical waste (HMW) which contains infectious medical waste (IFMW) and toxic fractions or a mixture of them. However, this cat- egorization is not always clear or constant and other terms are mentioned in the legislation of several countries (e.g. pharmaceu- tical, chemical). In addition, a large variation in the amounts of MW appears to exist, which might be related to the fact that it is not always clear whether the non-hazardous fraction is included in the MW measured. In studies performed in Greece, Graikos et al. (2010) found that the hazardous medical waste fraction from a small public facility (without permanent beds) in Greece ranged from 13% to up to 92% of the total medical waste, depending on the department/laboratory of that facility. In the medical microbi- ology department of the facility, in particular, the 75% of the total hazardous medical waste was found to be infectious (Graikos et al., 2010). Komilis and Katsafaros (2011) found that the infectious fraction in an insular public hospital was 17% of the total HMW, whilst the infectious and toxic (mixed) fraction was 78%. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2017.01.033 0956-053X/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Environmental Engineering, Democri- tus University of Thrace, Xanthi, Greece. E-mail address: dkomilis@env.duth.gr (D. Komilis). Waste Management xxx (2017) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Waste Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman Please cite this article in press as: Komilis, D., et al. Generation and composition of medical wastes from private medical microbiology laboratories. Waste Management (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2017.01.033